Ron Paul said this weekend that he thinks Congress will continue to duck voting the ISIS War up or down while nevertheless voting for additional funding of the war. Paul’s prediction came during a conversation with Charles Goyette regarding the war and US foreign policy in Paul and Goyette’s most recent weekly podcast discussion.
Regarding what congressional action he expects, Paul, the chairman and founder of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, states:
I don’t think they are going to have any trouble getting this money because the money already is coming up. Even if they don’t have the vote on the war, which I don’t think they will, they’ll indirectly vote for the war. And this has been used in courtroom arguments—“No, there wasn’t a declaration of war, but it is a battle, and, if the Congress votes for the money, that is an indirect endorsement of the war.” In a moral sense it is. In a technical constitutional sense that shouldn’t replace the outright declaration of war. So this is marching on. I think it’s almost $6 billion that they’re going to spend to send more troops over there, double the number of troops there.
Listen to the complete ten-minute discussion here.
In June 2011, a group of US House of Representatives members, including Paul (R-TX) and RPI Advisory Board Members John J. Duncan, Jr. (R-TN), Walter Jones (R-NC), and Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), challenged in US district court the US government waging war against Libya without a congressional declaration of war or even any congressional authorization. The court dismissed that lawsuit four months later — as people around the world were learning of the killing of Libya leader Muammar Gaddafi.
During a Thursday House Armed Services Committee hearing, Jones argued, as he has before, that Congress has the responsibility of deciding if the US wages war in Iraq and Syria. Leaders in the House and Senate who determine what is voted in the congressional bodies, though, have for months been happy to just let the war proceed.
