Congressmen are not happy about the White House's new
argument that the Libya intervention doesn't rise to the
level of "hostilities" and therefore doesn't come under the jurisdiction of the
War Powers Resolution.
Sen. Richard
Lugar (R-IN), the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's ranking Republican,
sent a letter to chairman John Kerry
(D-MA) on Thursday morning asking for a hearing on the matter and Kerry
responded that he supported the idea, a Lugar aide told The Cable. Lugar wants the State Department's top lawyer, Harold Koh, to testify. June 28 is the
likely date for the hearing, the Lugar aide said.
SFRC spokesman Frederick
Jones told The Cable that no firm
date has been set, but that Kerry was working on it.
"The Foreign Relations Committee has debated the
Libyan action at several hearings over the last two months. The committee held
a hearing on the War Powers Resolution last Congress. In conjunction with Sen.
Richard Lugar, the Committee's ranking Republican, Chairman Kerry is working to
schedule a hearing later this month to address the issue," said Jones.
Suffice it to say that Lugar is not happy with the administration's
claim that the War Powers Resolution does not apply to the Libya intervention.
"The Administration's position is both legally
dubious and unwise. The United States is playing a central and indispensable
role in military operations that have no end in sight. The Administration
estimates that the cost of these operations will exceed $1 billion by
September," Lugar said in a statement on Thursday. "Military operations of this
significance, with far reaching consequences on our military, security and
relations with other nations, require the clear support of the American
people. For this reason, our Constitution provides that powers related to
the use of military force are shared between the President and Congress."
In
a conference call with reporters on Wednesday afternoon, White
House Counsel Bob Bauer said that
the administration will argue that military intervention in Libya is not
subject to that law, due to the limited nature of the U.S. role in the
conflict.
"Our view is even in the absence of the authorization we are operating
consistent with the resolution," Bauer said in response to a question from The
Cable. "We are now in a position where we are operating in a support role.
We are not engaged in the any of the activities that typically over the years
in War Powers analysis has considered to constitute hostilities within the
meaning of the statute."
Other senior Republicans who aren't buying that
argument include House Speaker John
Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Armed Services Committee ranking Republican John McCain (R-AZ), who
said
on Thursday that "The administration made an announcement that will strike most
of my colleagues as a confusing breach of common sense."
But while Lugar is against the military intervention
in Libya, McCain supports it. However, his efforts with Kerry to craft a
resolution endorsing the action have
yet to surface in Congress. Meanwhile, 10 House
members are suing the administration under the War Powers Resolution, and
various efforts to defund the Libya war are underway in the lower chamber.
"The result of all this, I hate to say, is plain in
the actions of our colleagues on the other side of the Capitol in the House,"
McCain said. "The accumulated consequences of all this delay, confusion and
obfuscation has been a wholesale revolt in Congress against the
administration's policy."
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