[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 9 (Wednesday, January 24, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H814-H822]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1700
                       LEARNING FROM OUR HISTORY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Dornan] is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, while my good friend from Arkansas is in the 
chair, I plan not to bore you, sir, but to educate you. You are already 
pretty darn educated, and I love your State; and I have told you more 
than once, 

[[Page H815]]
there are 23 Medal of Honor winners from Arkansas, and it is a great 
State. And it is under a cloud for awhile, but it is going to be 
liberated 286 days from right now, 285 from when we wake up in the 
morning, to regain its place in the pantheon of the 50 American States.
  Let me take a moment again to do what I did in one of the five times 
I spoke today, a 1-minute four times on the defense bill, and point out 
again the headlines from yesterday, last night, or the headlines this 
morning.
  Mr. Speaker, are you aware that last night, because I was on 
television a year ago last night on all three networks, CNN all day 
long, PBS, because I inadvertently used formal words from the U.S. 
Constitution about giving aid and comfort to an enemy. I had not 
realized how archaic this language was.
  I carry around a Constitution most of the time. Here it is. What it 
says in article III, section 3, in very archaic language, listen to 
this and why I should have said sustenance and support to the Communist 
enemies in Hanoi, referring to a certain 23-year-old Rhodes scholar who 
is ditching class to travel Europe lobbying for a Ho Chi Minh victory. 
But here is article III, section 3, and of course I did not mean 
treason. You have to be very smart and diabolical and clever to be 
engaged in treason.
  Article III, section 3, U.S. Constitution: Treason against the United 
States shall consist only in levying war against them, meaning the 
States, they always wrote that way in our pre-Civil War, true 
Federalist period, or in adhering to their, the States', enemies, 
giving them aid and comfort; and in the original document, they 
actually gave a capital letter A to aid and a capital C to comfort.
  No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of 
two witnesses to the same overt act or on confession in open court. 
Even then, our original Founding Fathers, the colonialists, British 
citizens, tell the Concord Bridge and Lexington Green gunfights, they 
were very strict about what treason is. So, of course, I meant nothing 
about treason.
  I had my words taken down, and I refused to apologize because the 
essence of my remarks was true and is true now, that when Mr. Clinton 
puts in the gallery Barry McCaffrey, I didn't have time in my 1-minute 
to really explain that General McCaffrey is one of our combat CINC's. 
He is the Commander in Chief of Southern Command, stationed in Panama. 
He is an outstanding man, and when I met him in Desert Storm as the 
two-star major general division commander of the 24th Mechanized 
Infantry Division, not knowing then, unless he had the battle plan, 
that Schwarzkopf, General Schwarzkopf would pick him to be the point of 
the spear and to be the main trusted armored force, backed up by the 
101st Airborne in the Harbor Division like the 101st that is now in 
Bosnia coming down from Europe, brigades thereof, that he would be the 
point of the spear, circling into Iraq, cutting around Kuwait, and that 
he had been allowed to complete his mission and he was shocked that he 
was not allowed to, as I saw him so state on television in a 
documentary.
  He could have taken Basra, cut off the Republican Guard. Tens of 
thousands of Kurdish men, women, and children would not have been 
butchered in the north. Saddam Hussein would have been captured and 
executed by his own officers, 400 of whom he tortured to death because 
we didn't end that war, like the person that my good and honorable 
friend George Bush called Hitler.
  So here is Barry McCaffrey, two stars. He gets a third star. Clinton 
comes into office, McCaffrey is coming over as Chief of the Joint 
Chiefs, and he is sitting in the waiting room at the White House 2 
years, 10 months ago, and a prepubescent puke staffer of Clinton's 
walks up to him when he says, good morning, and she comes over to him 
and leans in his face and says, we don't talk to people who wear the 
uniform down here at the White House.
  Now, Clinton told Gen. Colin Powell, who was then Chairman of the 
Joint Chiefs, try and get me an I.D. on this young woman staffer and we 
will nail her; and Colin Powell promptly said, I am not interested in 
who it is or finding out who this one person is. Change the attitude of 
your staff toward people in the military.
  Well, of course, all of this was picked up from the top down, from 
the loathsome remarks in the letter to one of Arkansas's great 
retirees, Bataan Death March survivor Col. Eugene Holmes, and had the 
honor 11 months ago to have dinner with him and his beautiful Irene, 
his wife of 55 or 60 years down in their home in Fayetteville. This 
letter still resonates in my head when I look up at Mr. Clinton 
standing there at that roster where Winston Churchill has stood more 
than once, Douglas MacArthur has stood, all the great and not-so-great 
leaders of the world of late, and I look when he talks about families.
  And I look at my own stickers and bumper stickers and signs that I 
have used all during this Presidential quest and it says, Faith, Family 
and Freedom, the motto of all of my congressional campaigns, and I hear 
this resonate in Clinton's remarks last night. Faith, family, and he 
talks about this noble Gen. Barry McCaffrey fighting for freedom and 
for his country.
  As I pointed out this morning, Clinton could not gag out of his 
throat the word Vietnam. He talked about McCaffrey's Silver Stars, two 
of them; most people die earning that highest decoration. It is No. 3 
after Medal of Honor, Distinguished Service Cross. He said he had three 
Purple Hearts, as my dad did in World War I, but he could not tell us, 
sitting next to his beautiful daughter Chelsea and then Mrs. Clinton 
and on this side the great hero survivor of the Holocaust, 14 years of 
age, survived a hell on Earth, the horror of Auschwitz. Clinton 
couldn't refer to General McCaffrey and say, he won those honors 
fighting for his country and fighting for the country of Vietnam that I 
helped to turn over to communism and that I am now normalizing 
relations with the Communist killers who tore up General McCaffrey's 
arm, gave him those three Purple Hearts, using Russian equipment and 
Russian bullets and AK-47 rifles to tear up this young captain's body.

  And where was Clinton when Moscow was sending those weapons to Hanoi? 
He was in Moscow. Unbelievable.
  Now, here are the headlines, Mr. Speaker. Clinton Embraces GOP Themes 
in Setting the Agenda. Wednesday, today, January 24, 21 years ago today 
my hero dad died. As I said in my 1-minute, he would be tormented by 
the lack of character and integrity at the top of our Government today.
  The era of big government is over, Clinton tells the Nation. Here is 
the New York Times, America's so-called mother paper, whose motto is, 
All the News That's Fit to Print, Clinton offers challenge to the 
Nation, the era of big government is over. Subtitle, appeal to voters, 
tries to preempt the GOP message.
  How about this one; that was the New York Times. Here is the 
Washington Times, a better newspaper if you are looking for hard-core 
truth or conservative reporting. Clinton concedes the end of the big 
government era, State of the Union stresses responsibility and self-
reliance.
  Well, before the media would--before the media calls me and says, 
well, what would you have done as a theme tonight? I thought back to 
something written 23 years ago by Alistair Cooke. Some people may 
remember the great character Archie Bunker. He called him Alistair 
DeCooke.
  Alistair Cooke was one of those rare people who kept his British 
homeland citizenship and became an American citizen. He came here in 
1938 right before World War II as one of the young reporters for the 
BBC. He stayed on to be the immediate prior host of Masterpiece 
Theater. He loved the United States, loved our mother country, 
brilliantly reported for Vogue. And my colleagues who may be listening, 
I am joined on the floor by my pal, Sonny Bono of California. Sonny, I 
want you to listen to this for your kids.
  Mr. Speaker, listen to Alistair Cooke in a birthday present for our 
200th bicentennial, written 4 years in advance in 1972, published by 
Knopf & Company in 1973, run on television in 13 wonderfully produced 
1-hour presentations, 13 documentaries, called Alistair Cooke's 
America, rerun 3 years later in our exact bicentennial year.
  Here is his present, and imagine if Clinton had said words like this. 
Now, remember, this is written 24 years ago this spring and summer.
  What is fiercely in dispute, Mr. Cooke says, between the Communist 

[[Page H816]]
  and non-Communist nations today is the quality and staying power of 
American civilization. Who uses that term more than any of us, 
``American civilization''? Why, our Speaker, Newt Gingrich. Maybe Newt 
is on to something.
  Every other country scorns American materialism while striving in 
every big and little way to match it; envy obviously has something to 
do with it. But there is a true basis for this debate, and it is 
whether America is in its ascendance or its decline.
  Cooke continues, and I used to have this memorized, the next three 
paragraphs, probably could still recite it without looking at the page, 
but I want it to be precisely correct. I traveled to all 50 of our 
States on child pornography, all of 1973, 1974, 1975, and intermixed 
with my campaigning in my first congressional victory in 1976, opening 
my speeches all over America, including Arkansas, Mr. Speaker, with 
these words: I myself, Alistair Cooke, think I recognize here in 
America several of the symptoms that Edward Gibbon maintained were 
signs of the decline of Rome and which arose not from external enemies, 
but from inside the country itself.
  Then I would take a footnote and quote Abraham Lincoln when he was 
about 38 years of age where he said this country would never be 
conquered from outside, no despot would ever take a drink of water from 
the Ohio River; that if we collapsed, it would be suicide from our own 
decadence.
  Alistair Cooke continues, the signs of Rome: a mounting love of show 
and luxury, a widening gap between the very rich and the very poor, our 
liberal colleagues could agree with that one, an obsession with sex.
  Think of modern American television today: prime time, afternoon soap 
operas, slime-ball talk shows. They are still on, all claiming they 
will reform within the next 6 months, still running ads backing, trying 
to seek broken and dysfunctional families to come on and make fools of 
themselves, an obsession with sex.
  Get this next line, Mr. Speaker, and think how many debates we have 
had in the last decade; this is written 24 years ago: Freakishness in 
the arts masquerading as originality, and enthusiasm pretending to 
creativeness, these symptoms are shared by Western Europe, though they 
seem to be milder there, only because America has a livelier tradition 
of self-criticism. Thank heavens for our self-criticism.
  In the past decade, that would be 1963 to 1973, America has 
demonstrated the Roman folly of exercising military might in places 
remote from the centers of power. He is referring to Vietnam. Could 
that also mean Somalia, Haiti, or Bosnia in the Balkan winter?
  Cooke continues, And in finding herself, America, so frustrated by 
the stamina of primitive peoples on their own ground as to fall back to 
the Roman conclusion that, and he is quoting from original Roman 2,000 
years old, nothing could reconcile the minds of the barbarians to peace 
unless they experienced in their own country the calamities of war.
  And who used that immoral Roman policy on the Vietnamese, the 
Laotians, and the Cambodians? Robert Strange, his mother's maiden name, 
I guess, McNamara. That criminal, McNamara, who has poured salt into 
the raw wounds of all of the MIA families across this country with his 
groveling Council of Foreign Relations-organized trip to Hanoi and his 
appearance on talk shows across this country with some sort of gutless 
apology for what he did not only to our young men and our eight nurses 
whose names are on the Vietnam memorial wall, but what he did to 
millions of South Vietnamese and North Vietnamese, and eventually 
created the failed pattern by a gutless President LBJ to turn all of 
Southeast Asia over to communism.

                              {time}  1715

  So it is McNamara that he is talking about here in 1973, even though 
he resigned 5 years before, but McNamara was still in his 5th of 13 
years at the World Bank, drawing about, in now dollars, $800,000 to 
$900,000 a year tax free for 13 years since he walked off the 
battlefield in Vietnam, McNamara, and only did it come to an end in 
Reagan's first year of 1981.
  Back to Alistair Cooke's TV series and the book that grew from it, 
``America.''
  There is too, Cooke says, the general desire to live off the state, 
whether it is a junkie on welfare or an airline subsidized by the 
Government.
  We did end that during my tenure here.
  In a notion that Washington, big daddy, will provide, and most 
disturbing of all, a developing moral numbness to vulgarity, to 
violence, and to the assault on the simplest of human decencies.
  This is written 24 years ago. Quo vadis, whither goest thou? What 
have we done since then? Yet the original institutions of this country 
still have great vitality. The republic can be kept, but only if we 
care to keep it.
  There Alistair Cooke is paraphrasing the great Benjamin Franklin some 
200 years earlier.
  Much of the social turmoil in America springs from the energy of 
people who are trying to apply those institutions to forgotten memories 
and who have awakened after a long sleep.
  I thought Republicans, conservatives, because the other power was 
decaying and were devoid of ideas, I thought we would take that power 
in the late seventies, and because of Watergate, and again corruption 
at the top, my party was to wander for 40 years in the political 
desert.
  Back to Cooke: As to the rage to believe that we found the secret of 
liberty, in general permissiveness from the cradle on, that is liberal 
permissiveness, this seems to me a disastrous sentimentality, which, 
whatever liberties it sets loose, loosens also the cement that alone 
can bind any society into a stable compound.
  A code of obeyed taboos. That means taboos on child abuse, 
homosexuality, adultery, all the taboos that are written into Mosaic 
law and written about powerfully and poetically in the Old Testament, 
the Bible of the Hebrew people.
  I can only recall the saying of a wise Frenchman that ``Liberty is 
the luxury of self-discipline.''

  Self-discipline. What does Clinton say last night? He stresses 
responsibility and self-reliance. Self-discipline. What a source for 
those virtues.
  Historically, those peoples that did not discipline themselves had 
discipline thrust upon them from the outside. Usually, Mr. Speaker, in 
a bloody revolution. Or in a bloody revolution. That is why, Cooke 
continues, the normal cycle of life and death of great nations has been 
first a powerful tyranny, broken by a revolt, the enjoyment of liberty, 
then the abuse of liberty, and back to tyranny again. As I see it in 
this country, America, a land of the most persistent idealism and the 
blandest cynicism, and this is where it ended my memory of these 
paragraphs, the race is on between its decadence and its vitality.
  The race is on, 24 years ago. And what a race it has been these last 
two-and-a-half decades. How did anybody ever believe that somebody with 
such disrespect for the Presidency, the office of the Presidency, would 
come to us as a perpetual Governor in a one-party State, changed by the 
gentleman in the chair and a vibrant growing Republican Party in 
Arkansas, that a person would come to the Democratic primary process 
with so much baggage that we are still reading in our papers about 
grand juries and suicides and is it a murder and Whitewater and one 
horrible $100,000 bribe hidden by cattle futures; Jennifer Flower's 
name ricocheting around, Paula Corbin Jones, Marilyn Jo Jenkins, Sally 
Perdue. And I am lectured to? In the week my grandchild is born, that I 
must cherish the children? And I must be a good family man?
  Look at these quotes that I wrote down last night. I did not want to 
be disrespectful to the office, so I did not sit in this Chamber. Here 
is the first note I took down. The era of big government is over.
  That is what I said when I ran for Congress in 1976. Citizens must 
not be left to fend for themselves. What does that mean? Is that what 
Alistair Cooke was talking about, big daddy, let Washington do it? What 
has that got to do with self-reliance and responsibility?
  Is it the command of Mother Teresa, who shook my hand on December 8 
and said, ``When you are President, a special love for the poor and 
vulnerable.'' But she means all those little infants in their mother's 
wombs. Yes, she commands us and every rich nation in the 

[[Page H817]]
world to love the poor. But I do not think that is exactly what we were 
talking about last night, because any time either one of the Clintons 
meets with Mother Theresa, they give her great lip service, and then 
disregard everything she says the minute when she leaves their country. 
The same with Pope John Paul II, Billy Graham, or the head of the 
Southern Baptist Convention.

  Self-reliance, teamwork, we must have both. That is what we are 
developing on this side of the aisle, teamwork. He talks about a new, 
smaller Government, finally, when we have $5 trillion of debt and we 
are heading for $6 trillion, before we begin to even turn around that 
debt.
  I was in the well the day before yesterday with Molly Christine Oona 
Dornan, Molly O. Dornan, not 10 days old when I had her here, and look 
at the debt that we have already put on all of my 10 grandchildren. 
Although like I am seventh or eighth here in the House, I am like a 
piker compared to Jim Bunning who is sitting here with 28 
grandchildren, or Henry Gonzalez, with 31 or 32 and a couple of great-
grandchildren, or Ron Packard, one of my colleagues from Orange County, 
who has 32 grandchildren, I think.
  What a debt we have put on all of these kids. When I talk about our 
posterity or our children around here, I am thinking of names and 
faces. I have got five and five now, five grandsons who are going to be 
told you can do anything with a woman you want, and have high school 
kids say to me. And on my other side, I have five granddaughters. Every 
single one of these shows I turn on now is all T&A, and in the trade 
they know what that means.
  Mr. Clinton says last night he wants to meet with the executives of 
the television industry. Sonny Bono is trying to do a terrific job to 
try to talk common sense to these people. That was one of the best real 
lines in the speech. Produce things you want your children to look at. 
That does not means a tough version of Shakespeare or violence where it 
is necessary when you are doing a cocaine story in South America or 
something. But this mindless violence, even by some conservative 
producers, and Sylvester Stallone's name comes to mind, and other 
people, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who are supposed to be associated with 
the Republican side of events and issues. This worship of violence, 
egregious, promiscuous sex, and a sneaky little message that drugs are 
OK, I do not know how we are going to get it done under this 
Presidency, over the next 286 days, any more than we did under Mr. 
Nixon.

  Here was the plea last night. Stronger families, a stronger America. 
There it is, faith, family and freedom. I guess we can thank God for 
small favors, that he did not say he was the new and everlasting 
covenant again. That is Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
  He still does not get the second amendment straight. That was wrong. 
And I repeated what got me my words taken down last year about claiming 
that there is no Russian missiles pointed at us. What got me a little 
exorcised a year ago this week was he said we won the cold war.
  That brought to mind the joke I heard as a kid when Tonto and the 
Lone Ranger were surrounded. He says ``What are we going to do, 
Tonto?'' And says ``What do you mean we, Kemo Sabe?'' No we. Clinton 
had nothing to do with winning the cold war. Never lifted a pinkie. As 
a matter of fact, he was helping the other side, because it was an 
undeclared war. Again, there are people I call traitors. He is not one 
of them, not some misguided 23-year-old student ditching class at 
Oxford and traveling through all the Scandinavian capitals who were on 
the wrong sides of that conflict for freedom against Barry McCaffrey 
and his quest to rid Vietnam of oppression, as my dad helped rid France 
of oppression at the beginning of this century.
  No, we have got one heck of a battle before us. And let me give some 
good news here on the defense authorization bill that we just won with 
287 votes to 129. Now, just some simple arithmetic for young students 
who may be following the course of events here on the floor. Mr. 
Speaker. To override a President's veto in this House you need two-
thirds. Two-thirds of 435 is 290. So if you are looking up at the 
lights at either end of the Chamber and you see that they hit 145, you 
know that the President is going to be supported in a veto. They hit 
129.
  We did not have to hit 290, although I saw three Republicans running 
who missed the vote, who were all going to vote with me, so we would 
have hit 290. Now, if he vetoes this defense authorization bill because 
of Dornan language in it to cut off abortions, to put out of the 
military, respectfully, gently, over 6 months, with full military 
hospital service and an honorable discharge, people who stuck a filthy 
needle in their arm, rolled up their white, khaki, or blue sleeve to 
stick a needle in their arms and get infected with the HIV virus, and 
we are going to give them an honorable discharge. If they go to a men's 
room and have unsafe sex with a stranger, anal sex, we are going to 
give them an honorable discharge in 6 months. If they go to a house of 
prostitution and have sex, against orders of their commander, do not go 
to that house of prostitution, it is off limits, every prostitute is 
infected with AID's, and they break the law, dishonorably, and go, they 
get a 6-month time to adjust their affairs, FIIGMO, FIIGMO means, let 
me get a softer version, ``forget it, I got my orders.'' They will not 
be productive for 6 months. And then they get an honorable discharge, 
while Michael New, who would not put on the U.N. beanie or wear the 
U.N. patch on his military uniform, which is in the regs that he should 
not have to, today he got a bad conduct discharge in Germany. As the 
chairman of Military Personnel, Mr. Speaker, you better believe I will 
be having hearings on that.

  So there is the two bad things about the defense bill today. Why we 
had to take out U.N. command and control beats me, but is that going to 
be a key Presidential issue of the next 286 days? And I have been on 
that trail without much money, back in the track, let me tell you 
without refutation, Mr. Speaker, the surest standing ovation in 
Republican primaries, whether it is Buchanan or Keyes or Lamar 
Alexander or our leader in the other body, Bob Dole, the minute one of 
us says to U.S. men and women under foreign or U.N. control, instant 
standing ovation, Mr. Speaker, pounding standing ovation, long. And 
Clinton wants to take that one on and demanded that we take our 
language out of the bill.
  Here are a few notes on that. In vetoing the defense bill, in part 
due to the provisions on U.N. and foreign command the control, Clinton 
demonstrated once again he is more interested in furthering the 
multilateral agenda of the United Nations than in looking out for the 
welfare of U.S. troops.
  This is all from Mr. Spence's team, these talking points. The 
provision in question would have required by law that before placing 
U.S. troops under the operation and control of the United Nations, or 
any other foreign entity, a President would have to certify that it 
would be in the national security interest to do so. It would not have 
prohibited a President from placing U.S. forces under the U.N. control. 
It would have merely required that he formally justify such action in 
writing to this Congress, thereby to our American people. Rather than 
weaken our provision, the conference agreement drops this provision. 
Again, no deal is better than a bad deal.

  This action represents a continued commitment to the principle that 
only qualified U.S. commanders, like Barry McCaffrey, should command 
U.S. troops in battle.
  In contrast, the Clinton administration continues to insist, I call 
this the Strobe Talbot factor, the Clintons had dinner with him again 
on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day while our troops, and I, were in 
Germany at the railheads, trying not to mash their fingers in ice 
rings, lashing all that heavy armored equipment to trains that go 
through disgusting railheads in Hungary where, there were no toilet 
facilities or anything, and there is Clinton golfing at Hilton Head at 
South Carolina with Strobe Talbot.
  But the Strobe Talbot factor is to place U.S. troops under the 
operational command of U.N. commanders during so-called peacekeeping or 
peace enforcement operations, this in spite of the U.N. having 
repeatedly demonstrated in Bosnia and Somalia, and I have left out 
Haiti, a nightmare waiting to explode, the incompetence of the U.N., 
their negligence in attempting to 

[[Page H818]]
carry out the most rudimentary of military operations.

                              {time}  1730

  The Army officer friend of mine just back from Haiti said the 
whorehouses in Haiti are thriving with U.N. personnel on a revolving-
door visit policy, just as they went to the houses of prostitution like 
Sonia's Kontiki in Bosnia where some of the women being held there were 
slaves under the control of renegade Serbian Bosnians.
  Accordingly, we conservatives remain committed to limiting the 
ability of any administration to place U.S. forces at risk on behalf of 
the United Nations and will aggressively pursue our policy in any 
number of legislative vehicles during the upcoming session of Congress, 
and we are well into it.
  Now, national missile defense. This one blows my mind. In the week 
that one of my heroes, Danny Graham, three-star general, West Point 
graduate, son of an Army sergeant major, Danny Graham was buried at 
Arlington this week. In the week that General Graham is buried, the 
father of high frontier. The main civilian, albeit retired military, 
proponent of strategic defense, the strategic defense initiative. One 
of the men, that great genius, Dr. Edward Teller brought the idea to 
Ronald Reagan.
  Danny Graham died too young a man. He was 75, and Danny was buried 
with full military honors, because he is a former head of DIA, a No. 2 
man at CIA. A three-star general's funeral at Arlington is something 
that will not leave any dry eye with any patriot in the audience. The 
week he is buried, this Paul Revere, as I used to call him when I would 
introduce him. I worked for him during the 2 years I was out of this 
House when I had to move from West Los Angeles to Orange County to 
continue my congressional career.
  In that week, Clinton vetoes, jerks out of our bill with his veto 
power, National Missile Defense. Clinton's veto of the original defense 
bill further the differences between the Congress, which supports the 
deployment of a national defense way in the majority here and in the 
Senate, and Clinton who has now demonstrated his opposition to 
defending the American people at home in America from ballistic missile 
attack.
  Rather than compromise on an issue of principle, the national missile 
defense language opposed by Clinton was removed from the bill we passed 
today. To modify it to meet the White House's objections would have 
weakened to the point of making it meaningless.
  The fight goes on, Mr. Speaker. On a matter of principle, no deal is 
better than a bad deal. Other ballistic missile defense related 
provisions have been retained, particularly the one I championed, Navy 
high-tier, upper-tier missile defense. We kept in the additional $450 
million for the establishment, just transferring it to a core theater 
missile defense, TMD.
  The acceleration of key theater missile defense systems, that is 
where we protect our men overseas and women, and the allies who are 
with us, which is fine, should be done and a moral thing to do. But 
what about the wives and husbands and children and families back in the 
good old U.S.A.?
  We have provisions which will prevent Clinton from implementing any 
agreement with Russia on theater missile defense demarcation, quote-
unquote, unless certain conditions are met. We House Republicans remain 
committed as ever to pursuing an aggressive policy to protect the 
American people from ballistic missile defense. Our fight will continue 
on several fronts, including the fiscal year 1997 budget cycle, which 
begins any day now, where we start our housekeeping with 13 
appropriations spending bills.
  The gentleman from California, Mr. Bono from the gorgeous lower 
desert of California, Palm Springs and that area, it was a year ago 
tonight, give or take a few days, that the gentleman regaled the 
glitterati, the cognoscenti, the Washington press corps, and told them 
that his introduction to the rough and tumble in the House was Bob 
Dornan in the well with a 1-minute critiquing Clinton, and he thought I 
was going to eat the lectern that he is now leaning on.
  Mr. BONO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California [Mr. 
Dornan]. I did, approximately a year ago, joke with him and that is the 
way he took it. But I just want to say about Congressman Dornan that he 
is not to be taken lightly. He is a fighter, if I have ever seen a 
fighter. He is a man that lives, breathes, and sleeps what he believes.
  There is not a hypocritical bone in his body. There is no hypocrisy 
in the man whatsoever. And so I am proud to be his friend. When I 
listen to him sometimes, the determination that he pursues a fight to 
bring America where it should be, and continues, whether the odds are a 
million to one or 1 to 1, and I know this, until his dying breath, he 
will never quit.
  So, I am proud to call him my friend and I am proud that he is on our 
side. I am proud that he is working so hard for this country, and I 
thank him.

  Bob, did I hear the President say he wanted charter school systems 
last night?
  Mr. DORNAN. Yes, you sure did.
  Mr. BONO. I find that fascinating, because in California, we had 
Proposition 174. I think you recall that. The Democrats were vehement 
against Proposition 174, which simply said we should have the right to 
school choice. Last night I heard the President say we should have the 
right to school choice. That is baffling me, Mr. Speaker.
  I think he even mentioned vouchers, did he not, Bob?
  Mr. DORNAN. He sure did.
  Mr. BONO. Mr. Speaker, we again said we want vouchers, not for the 
rich, but for everybody so that they could choose what school their 
children went to.
  I was not going to come down here, but I heard Congresswoman Woolsey 
talk about education. First of all, our budget increases education. It 
does not decrease. So, where or why she has concluded that it is a 
decrease is simply not the facts.
  It is so frustrating to come to this body and listen to talk or 
rhetoric or whatever you want to call it, and hear people just say 
whatever they want to say and it has nothing to do with the truth. I 
guess that is why I ran for office.
  Last night, the President talked about education. He revered 
education. Education is a wonderful thing, and as I said, we have 
increased funding for education. But he left out, I guess, kindergarten 
to elementary because in elementary schools now, they have barbed wire 
along the fences right now. I would love to send my children to a 
public school, but I would not dare.
  Mr. DORNAN. Not to keep people in, but to keep thugs and drug pushers 
out.
  Mr. BONO. I would love to send them to a public school so they would 
have that kind of exposure to total life, but I would fear for their 
lives.
  I remember when I was a little boy, the President was saying how rosy 
things are now, but I remember when I was a little boy, 5 years old or 
6, I could walk to school. I guarantee you if your child walked to 
school now at that age, he would get kidnaped and molested and probably 
killed. So to say things are so much rosier and better now is simply 
not true. Our public education system at that level is horrible. It is 
dastardly.
  If you send your child to elementary school now, the chances of him 
or her getting an education are impossible. It cannot happen. 
Fortunately, I have a few dollars. I can send my kids to a private 
school.
  Mr. DORNAN. You mean like Sidwell School, like where beautiful 
Chelsea goes?
  Mr. BONO. Exactly. Exactly. Which again is very interesting, because 
schools are so safe and so wonderful, but our very own President sends 
his child to a private school. I never could figure out the 
justification for that.
  Mr. DORNAN. Sonny, reclaiming my time. Let me read one of those 
opening paragraphs.
  Mr. Speaker, how much time do we have left?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hutchinson). The gentleman has 20 
minutes remaining.
  Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, listen to this. This is the paragraph after 
the ``thank you'' to the Speaker and Mr. Vice President and Members of 
the 104th Congress, and other pleasantries. ``I want to begin by saying 
to our men and women in uniform around the world.'' That is great. He 
is always with them taking photo opportunities, but we wonder still why 
he cannot gag 

[[Page H819]]
out the word Vietnam, although he did slip once last night in 
introducing another hero from the Oklahoma City bombing. He slipped and 
said he had been a Vietnam veteran. That is the first time I ever heard 
him say the word. He did not say that in the order to sending our men 
to Bosnia. He mentioned Northern Ireland and every war we have been in, 
but he forgot to mention Vietnam. Interesting. And all the Vietnam 
senior sergeants and officers noticed it. Now he says the state of our 
Union is strong, but your kids cannot walk to school.

  ``We have created nearly 8 million new American jobs.'' That is still 
way below what Ronald Reagan created, and he created it by cutting 
taxes. If Clinton had not created the largest tax increase in the 
history of any nation and all of civilization, because we cannot codify 
what the Egyptians got out of slave labor, this is the biggest tax 
increase in history.
  But here is a part germane to what the gentleman is talking about. He 
says, ``Our leadership in the world is strong.'' We are the last 
superpower because of what Reagan and Cap Weinberger and George Bush 
did, not because of him; not the way we are chopping back the military.
  He says, ``We are gaining ground and restoring our fundamental 
values.'' Not according to what the gentleman just said. He said, ``The 
crime rate is down.'' That is a misrepresentation. The baby-boomers are 
aging out of their high-testosterone-lending-itself-to-violence period. 
But at the bottom. The violence among young people is worse than ever.
  He says, ``Welfare rates are down.'' They are not. ``The food stamp 
rolls are down.'' They are not. That is a misrepresentation. And then 
he says, ``The teenage pregnancy rate is down.'' That drove our Whip, 
the gentleman from Texas, Tom DeLay, up the wall. What country is he 
looking at? Because I saw the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Traficant] take 
him on, and I saw our one Independent, the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. 
Sanders], cheering, ``That is right.'' It is not that rosy.
  We do have problems with our workforce. And then he says, ``We live 
in an Age of Possibility.'' That sounds like Jack Kemp and Newt and the 
Opportunity Society and all the upbeat stuff that we Republicans are 
getting Bob Dole to talk about, and that is what is giving Steve Forbes 
the shot, with his inherited millions, in the number 2 spot.
  But, back to Mr. Bono and a reality check on how rosy things are.
  Mr. BONO. Thank you for pointing out exactly what I am talking about. 
You know, I chose to be a Republican because the symbol of Republicans 
is responsibility. Selling the message of be a victim is an easy 
message to sell. It is probably 200-to-1 to sell, a message of ``Be 
responsible.'' But this man has been talking for half an hour about 
that we have to become responsible. Well, we must become responsible.
  I get so fed up when I hear the other side come down here in this 
well and just say whatever they feel like saying. And when 
Congresswoman Woolsey took off on education, education stinks. I cannot 
say it another way. It stinks.
  We spend more money than anybody and have the worst results. So now 
the solution to that is to spend even more money and still have it not 
achieve anything? No, that is not the truth. No, that is not what we 
should do. We should really look at our educational system and find out 
what we are doing wrong, which is staggering, and make an attempt to 
start doing things right so that all children, like when I was a little 
boy, can go back to public school again, which is almost impossible in 
this day.
  Public schools do not teach. They are not safe. They have become 
political. They do not stand for what they are supposed to stand for 
any longer.
  So, to paint that rosy picture about education just disturbed me so 
much because I wanted so badly for my two little children to go to 
public school and experience that, but I cannot. I would not dare do 
that to them.
  Now, I am telling you the truth, and I guess the other side finds the 
truth unpleasant and, therefore, they prefer to not tell reality. 
Reality, when they say how mean we are. Well, when we talk about 
Medicare, all we are trying to do when we talk about Medicare is 
instead of ending it in 7 years, which is what will happen now if we 
continue on this rosy path that supposedly exists, it will end in 7 
years.

                              {time}  1745

  We have extended it to 5 years. So we are telling you the truth. It 
is so hard to tell you that truth because it is so much easier to hear, 
do not worry about anything. There is plenty of money here and we will 
give it all to you. That is a lie. We do not have plenty of money. We 
owe $5 trillion and we are starting to work on 6, and that is going to 
accumulate fast and that rubberband is going to break very soon.
  I think that all my colleagues, including Mr. Dornan, I give them 
credit for being brave because what we are trying to convey to you is 
not necessarily popular and it can hurt our polls. It can hurt our 
public relations. It is so much easier to say rosy things, but to not 
tell you the truth, to not let you really confront the future as it is 
going to exist in reality but paint a rosy picture is a lie.
  I did not come here to lie. I came here because I think we are at the 
edge. We are right at the cliff. If we do not grab this country and 
bring it back, it will dissipate and explode and we will not have it 
anymore.
  Mr. DORNAN. Let me ask Mr. Bono, a freshman, as well known as any of 
the freshmen in that exciting group of 73 people, was this first year 
for you more difficult than you imagined it would be? Did we accomplish 
more than you thought? Is your energy and your optimism level still at 
high pitch?
  Mr. BONO. I follow your example. I am very impressed by the amount of 
energy that you put into this job and not necessarily deal with the 
consequences. I happily go in that path of whatever the--I am dedicated 
to saving this country. So my energy will always be 110 percent.
  Mr. DORNAN. We only have about 6 months. We are going to vote 
tomorrow, Wednesday, Thursday next week, then no votes until after the 
Iowa caucuses and the primary at the end of February, February 20 in 
New Hampshire. Because Bob Dole is the leader and wants to be in those 
States, there will not be any votes in the Senate, none. So then we 
have March, April, May, June, and July, that is 5 months, out for 
August. We come back for a wild September, hoping to get our 13 
spending appropriations bills, our housekeeping work here finished by 
September 30. We will be out in the first few days of October to have 1 
month to campaign. So we are talking about 6 months.
  What I am building up to is, do you appreciate how the American 
people in their own enlightened self-interest should give the 
Republicans for the third time in 66 years more than one of 2-year 
berths. If we are defeated and lose this on November 5 of this year, 
that means in 66 years, since 1930, before I was born, we have had 
three 2-year berths.
  What I am going to recommend the rest of this year is give us a 100-
percent disabled charging war hero, if Dole prevails, and I am trying 
to overtake him but I need some money to do it, if Dole prevails, put 
Dole in the White House, a man who put his blood into the soil of your 
native land, Italy, in Europe and Trent Lott is a leader in the Senate 
and Newt Gingrich reinvigorated, listening more to his true 
conservative friends in this House than the person who says he embraced 
him as he sobbed uncontrollably, so this person says, and then this 
farm State Congressman leaked all of that to Newt's enemies at the 
Washington Post for a front page story last week. I know who that dairy 
farm State Congressman was. Newt better pay attention to his friends in 
this House, his friends who believe in family and faith and freedom and 
espouse it in their life styles.
  If he comes back to home base and is inspired by Trent Lott and we 
have a Republican in the White House, we are going to need not just the 
next 6 months but the 105th Congress, two exciting sessions, to try and 
bring us, as you put it, on the edge of the lectern, back from the 
brink or as Alistair Cooke said, we are at a crossroads. We are almost 
schizophrenic, tearing ourselves in half. We better make the right 
decisions.
  Let me read something to you, where Mr. Clinton last night said, here 
are the seven challenges. First, cherish our children and strengthen 
the American 

[[Page H820]]
family. This weekend I went to Memphis, Sonny, and I stayed with two 
families, the Langstons and the Fergusons. They had both been to 
Promise Keepers, the big event in Dallas, tens of thousands of fathers 
swearing to not commit adultery on their wives, swearing to be loyal to 
their children and their brides. And who attacks them? NOW. Patricia 
Ireland, chief spear carrier for the lesbian movement in America. She 
is yelling at Promise Keepers because men are standing up and saying 
they want to be loyal to their families. Unbelievable.
  He asked the broadcast industry to rate the programming, as the movie 
industry does. I do not know where we are going to go with that.
  Second, provide Americans with educational opportunities. You are on 
the right committees. Listen to this. He wants to lash every classroom 
to the information highway by 2000. What is going to be on that 
highway? He says schools and communities must adopt national standards. 
What is that, dumbing down to the lowest common denominator.
  Then under challenge 3, this is the one that caught your attention 
among several items, he said help every American achieve economic 
security, create a $2,600 voucher for the unemployed or underemployed 
to use for their education and training. How about vouchers for all of 
our children? That will be stopped by the liberal dominant wing of his 
permissively liberal party.
  Then he says, fourth, take back our streets from crime, gangs, and 
drugs. That is what I have been trying to do as a father and since I 
have come here a grandfather all my life. It is liberal permissiveness 
and liberal fascination, not with the victims of crime but with the 
perpetrators of crime, trying to figure out how to help them work their 
way through the legal system and get back out on the streets more 
quickly.
  He says keep the crime bill of 1994 on the books. You could have lost 
because of that crime bill. And because 11 Republicans went down to the 
White House and gave him what he wanted, we lost 10 to 20 Republican 
seats. We should be at 256, if it were not for the political garbage 
and waste of billions in that phony crime bill of 1994.
  Mr. BONO. I would like to ask the gentleman a question, since you are 
making these points on crime and crime prevention. Are we not at war?
  Mr. DORNAN. It is a war.
  Mr. BONO. Is it crime prevention anymore or is it full blown war?
  Mr. DORNAN. Sonny, you may not know Gen. Barry McCaffrey personally. 
Nothing is all dark in life. Clinton's appointment to the FBI, Louis 
Freeh, father of five kids, great guy, tough judge, tough agent in the 
street, Barry McCaffrey and the southern, the CINC, Commander in Chief 
of Southern Command down there in Panama. He came to the Heritage 
Foundation recently and gave this startling statistic: 100 percent of 
the cocaine in the world comes from South America through the Panama 
Canal, through the Caribbean area. He is going to be a great general in 
command of a war against this poison of narcotics.
  Mr. BONO. Would you consider it a war when a family accidentally 
drives down the wrong street and is blown to oblivion because they 
simply accidentally made a wrong turn? Can crime prevention help that 
or is that war?
  Mr. DORNAN. I was in Los Angeles the night that story broke on the 
news. We had not recovered from the travesty of justice that O.J. 
Simpson got away with, slitting two throats to the spine and stabbing 
an innocent young man 17 times. The whole city is still in the throes 
of that, all these divisions. And here comes this unbelievable story, 
throwing ashcans. I do not know the ethnic background of anybody in 
that story. I never saw enough pictures.
  I did see one crying uncle, trying to make a statement to the press, 
but it was a little 4-year-old girl that took a bullet in the head as 
the father tried to drive out of a cul-de-sac where he had gotten off 
the freeway and took a wrong turn. A gang decided to take him on.
  Let me tell you something, Sonny. I only have one classic car I am 
trying to rebuild.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hutchinson). Members are reminded to 
refer to other Members by their last name and State.
  Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Bono, last week a car that I was restoring--just 
spent about $3 to $4,000 on it last year--a 31-year-old classic 1964 
fire mist red El Dorado automobile, was towed by a tow truck out of my 
son's carport on Church Lane in west Los Angeles, a few blocks from 
OJ's Rockingham house--but an apartment building. They came at noon on 
a slight rainy, drizzly day last week, hooked it up to a tow truck, 
because the battery is not hooked up, the gearbox is not finished. I am 
restoring the car that I bought 31 years ago used.
  I got it with some residuals from the series ``Twelve O'clock High.'' 
It is gone now to some shop down somewhere in Los Angeles. The people 
that stole the car were sitting in it 3 days before. My son was back 
here with me, got snowed in with that blizzard. Neighbors saw them. 
They said, would he sell this car, the owner? No way, they are 
restoring it. Cut the Club off the wheel. Police were called by my 
son's neighbors. They came and said somebody has to call the owner. 
They forgot who.
  They said this car is going to be stolen. Two or three days later at 
noon, by tow truck. My 31-year-old classic is towed away.
  I heard somebody asking for help to bring down a child molester. Let 
me be creative, Sonny, since this well goes into homes all over 
America, maybe 1,300,000 people. I do not want to get too wild with the 
reward, but I will give $2,000. I will cash the check, 2,000 bucks cash 
for whoever will get me back my 1964, I call it my POW El Dorado 
because I got it the month the first POW as shot down. I was going to 
give it to a POW, I fantasized, at the end of that war, get back my 
fire mist red, and that license plate, this historical vehicle, HV295, 
D for Dornan, HV295, D for Dornan. This is what I will give, 2,000 
bucks cash to get my El Dorado back.
  By the way, that is my fourth automobile stolen in Los Angeles in 20 
years, three of them in the last 10. I have only gotten back one. It 
was in Tijuana sitting on a hill with the tires off it, but I got that 
back and I still own that red Bronco.
  Mr. BONO. Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to say that, do not ever take 
Congressman Dornan lightly. One thing you can be sure of, as certain as 
these are chairs, that he will always tell you the truth. And whether 
it is pleasant or unpleasant, he will tell you the truth. And that is 
why I am a Republican. So you are an inspiration to me.
  For that reason, of which I am very proud of you, and I hope that I 
can always follow in your footsteps in that I will always, whenever I 
speak to the public, tell them the truth.
  With that, I thank the gentleman for giving me the time in the well.
  Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, I have got one final valuable contribution 
to offer here.
  Turning back to my Constitution, printed by the bicentennial 
committee that I have been carrying for years here, as far as the 
President's Commander in Chief responsibilities, I quoted article III, 
section 3 earlier, here is article II, section 2; III.3 is on aid and 
comfort to the enemy. II.2 says this, 16 words: The President shall be 
the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States. 
Bingo. Sixteen more words on militia, and of the militia of the several 
States, 13 then, when called into the actual service of the United 
States. There was no National Guard then. So that is 18 more words, if 
you strip away all the the's and the and's, and the Army and the Navy 
and the in chief and all of this, it says President, Commander in 
Chief. That is it. That is it. There is nothing else in the 
Constitution.
  Who says that our Presidents, and this is my disagreement with one of 
our great leaders on the other side, who says the President of the 
United States can send people to Somalia, to Bosnia, to Haiti, or to 
Lebanon without getting the approval of this Congress? That is why I 
argued with my friend Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense, and the Navy 
combat attack pilot, carrier pilot George Bush. You cannot go to the 
gulf in a serious major conflict. I do not care if you have 28 nations 
banded together.

                              {time}  1800

  They are all getting the permissions of their Dumas and their 
congresses 

[[Page H821]]
and their Knessets and their various legislatures. You must come here. 
Dick Cheney used to tell me ``We will lose.'' I said ``You will not 
lose. You will lose the liberal leadership in the Senate and the House, 
and if we lost every one of them, but you win enough Democrats, we will 
have a big victory.'' The victory was 180 saying no, we cannot free 
Kuwait and protect world oil sources and stop Saddam Hussein from 
getting biological, chemical, and nuclear warfare terror capability, 
and on the winning side, how could I forget the winning side and 
remember the losing side, 253 to 180, a great vote.
  Now, we have a scholar at the Library of Congress, Lewis Fisher.
  Mr. Speaker, I will include for the Record Lewis Fisher's scholarly 
treatise on the Barbary wars, with more to come on why the President 
does not have the constitutional authorities to send young men and 
women all around the world at his whim.
  The material referred to is as follows:

         The Barbary Wars: Legal Precedent for Invading Haiti?

                           (By Louis Fisher)


                                SUMMARY

       The claim that President Clinton has constitutional 
     authority to invade Haiti without first obtaining 
     congressional authority is often linked to early presidential 
     actions. Supporters of broad executive power argue that a 
     President may deploy troops on his own authority and that 
     Congress can restrain him only after he acts. As support for 
     this position, the Barbary Wars during the time of Presidents 
     Jefferson and Madison are often cited. However, the 
     historical record demonstrates that these military operations 
     received advance authority from Congress. To the extent that 
     presidential initiatives were taken before congressional 
     action, they were defensive in nature and not offensive (as 
     contemplated for Haiti).


                               BACKGROUND

       During the presidencies of George Washington and John 
     Adams, U.S. military action conformed to the framers' 
     expectation that the decision to go to war or to mount 
     military operations was reserved to Congress and required 
     advance authorization. For example, President Washington's 
     military actions against Indian tribes were initially 
     authorized by Congress. Stat. 96, Sec. 5 (1789); Stat. 121, 
     Sec. 16 (1790); Stat. 222 (1791). Consistent with these 
     statutes, military operations were confined to defensive 
     measures. Offensive action required authority from Congress. 
     The Writings of George Washington (John C. Fitzpatrick ed. 
     1939).
       Similarly, when President Washington used military force in 
     the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, he acted on the basis of 
     statutory authority. Stat. 264, Sec. 1 (1792). President John 
     Adams engaged in the ``quasi-war'' with France from 1798 to 
     1800. Although Congress did not declare war, military 
     activities were fully authorized by more than two dozen 
     statutes in 1798. Stat. 547-611.


                    ACTIONS BY JEFFERSON AND MADISON

       Elected President in 1800, Thomas Jefferson inherited the 
     pattern established during the Washington and Adams 
     administrations: Congress had to authorize offensive military 
     actions in advance. One of the first issues awaiting 
     Jefferson was the practice of paying annual bribes 
     (``tributes'') to four states of North Africa: Morocco, 
     Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. Regular payments were made so 
     that these countries would not interfere with American 
     merchantmen. Over a period of ten years, Washington and 
     Adams paid nearly $10,000,000 in tributes.
       In his capacity as Secretary of State in 1790, Jefferson 
     had identified for Congress a number of options in dealing 
     with the Barbary powers. In each case it was up to Congress 
     to establish national policy and the executive branch to 
     implement it:
       Upon the whole, it rests with Congress to decide between 
     war, tribute, and ransom, as the means of reestablishing our 
     Mediterranean commerce. If war, they will consider how far 
     our own resources shall be called forth, and how far they 
     will enable the Executive to engage, in the forms of the 
     constitution, the co-operation of other Powers. If tribute or 
     ransom, it will rest with them to limit and provide the 
     amount; and with the Executive, observing the same 
     constitutional forms, to make arrangements for employing it 
     to the best advantage. 1 American State Papers: Foreign 
     Relations 105 (Walter Lowrie & Matthew St. Clair Clarke, eds. 
     1832).
       On March 3, 1801, one day before Jefferson took office as 
     President, Congress passed legislation to provide for a 
     ``naval peace establishment.'' 2 Stat. 110, Sec. 2 (1801). On 
     May 15, Jefferson's Cabinet debated the President's authority 
     to use force against the Barbary powers. The Cabinet agreed 
     that American vessels could repel an attack, but some 
     departmental heads insisted on a larger definition of 
     executive power. For example, Albert Gallatin, Secretary of 
     the Treasury, remarked: ``The Executive can not put us in a 
     state of war, but if we be put into that state either by the 
     decree of Congress or of the other nation, the command and 
     direction of the public force then belongs to the 
     Executive.'' Other departmental heads expressed different 
     views. Franklin B. Sawvel, ed., The Complete Anas of Thomas 
     Jefferson 213 (1903).
       After hearing these opinions from his Cabinet, Jefferson 
     chose to rely on statutory authority rather than theories of 
     inherent presidential power. Citing the statute of March 3, 
     the State Department issued a directive on May 20 to Captain 
     Richard Dale of the U.S. Navy, stating that under ``this 
     [statutory] authority'' Jefferson had directed that a 
     squadron be sent to the Mediterranean. If the Barbary powers 
     declared war on the United States, American vessels were 
     ordered to ``protect our commerce & chastise their 
     insolence--by sinking, burning or destroying their ships & 
     Vessels wherever you shall find them.'' 1 Naval Documents 
     Relating to the United States Wars With the Barbary Powers 
     467 (1939). Having issued that order, based on congressional 
     authority, Jefferson also wrote that it was up to Congress to 
     decide what policy to pursue in the Mediterranean: ``The real 
     alternative before us is whether to abandon the Mediterranean 
     or to keep up a cruise in it, perhaps in rotation with 
     other powers who would join us as soon as there is peace. 
     But this Congress must decide.'' The Writings of Thomas 
     Jefferson 63-64 (Ford ed. 1897).
       Insisting on a larger tribute, the Pasha of Tripoli 
     declared war on the United States. Jefferson did not 
     interpret this action as authority for the President to 
     engage in unlimited military activities. He informed Congress 
     on December 8, 1801, about the demands of the Pasha. Unless 
     the United States paid tribute, the Pasha threatened to seize 
     American ships and citizens. Jefferson had sent a small 
     squadron of frigates to the Mediterranean to protect against 
     the attack. He then asked Congress for further guidance, 
     stating that he was ``[u]nauthorized by the Constitution, 
     without the sanction of Congress, to go beyond the line of 
     defense. . . .'' It was up to Congress to authorize 
     ``measures of offense also.'' Jefferson gave Congress all the 
     documents and communications it needed so that the 
     legislative branch, ``in the exercise of this important 
     function confided by the Constitution to the Legislature 
     exclusively,'' could consider the situation and act in the 
     manner it considered most appropriate. A Compilation of the 
     Messages and Papers of the Presidents 315 (James D. 
     Richardson ed. 1897-1925) (hereafter ``Richardson'').
       Alexander Hamilton, writing under the pseudonym ``Lucius 
     Crassus,'' issued a strong critique of Jefferson's message to 
     Congress. Hamilton believed that Jefferson had defined 
     executive power with insufficient scope, deferring too much 
     to Congress. But even Hamilton, pushing the edge of executive 
     power, never argued that the President had full power to make 
     war on other nations. Hamilton merely argued that when a 
     foreign nation declares war on the United States, the 
     President may respond to that fact without waiting for 
     congressional authority:
       The first thing in [the President's message], which excites 
     our surprise, is the very extraordinary position, that though 
     Tripoli had declared war in form against the United States, 
     and had enforced it by actual hostility, yet that there was 
     not power, for want of the sanction of Congress, to capture 
     and detain her cruisers with their crews.
       . . . [The Constitution] has only provided affirmatively, 
     that, ``The Congress shall have power to declare War;'' the 
     plain meaning of which is, that it is the peculiar and 
     exclusive province of Congress, when the nation is at peace 
     to change that state into a state of war; whether from 
     calculations of policy, or from provocations, or injuries 
     received: in other words, it belongs to Congress only, to go 
     to War. But when a foreign nation declares, or openly and 
     avowedly makes war upon the United States, they are then by 
     the very fact already at war, and any declaration of the part 
     of Congress is nugatory; it is at least unnecessary.'' The 
     Works of Alexander Hamilton 745-747 (John C. Hamilton ed.).
       Congress responded to Jefferson's message by authorizing 
     him to equip armed vessels to protect commerce and seamen in 
     the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, and adjoining seas. The 
     statute authorized American ships to seize vessels belonging 
     to the Bey of Tripoli, with the captured property distributed 
     to those who brought the vessels into port. 2 Stat. 129 
     (1802). Legislators had no doubt about their constitutional 
     authority and duties. ``The simple question now,'' said Cong. 
     William Eustis, ``is whether [the President] shall be 
     empowered to take offensive steps.'' Cong. Samuel Smith 
     added: ``By the prescriptions of the law, the President 
     deemed himself bound.'' Annals of Cong., 7th Cong., 1st Sess. 
     328-329 (1801).
       Congress continued to pass legislation authorizing military 
     action against the Barbary powers. Legislation in 1803 
     provided additional armament for the protection of seamen and 
     U.S. commerce. 2 Stat. 106. Legislation the next year gave 
     explicit support for ``warlike operations against the regency 
     of Tripoli, or any other of the Barbary powers.'' 2 Stat. 
     291. Duties on foreign goods were placed in a ``Mediterranean 
     Fund'' to finance these operations. Id. at 292, Sec. 2. 
     Further legislation on the Barbary powers appeared in 1806, 
     1807, 1808, 1809, 1811, 1812, and 1813. 2 Stat. 391 (1806); 2 
     Stat. 436 (1807); 2 Stat. 456 (1808); 2 Stat. 511 (1809); 2 
     Stat. 616 (1811); 2 Stat. 675 (1812); 2 Stat. 809 (1813).
       Jefferson often distinguished between defensive and 
     offensive military operations, permitting presidential 
     initiatives for the former but not for the latter. In 1805, 
     he notified Congress about a conflict with the Spanish along 
     the eastern boundary of the Louisiana Territory (West 
     Florida). After detailing 

[[Page H822]]
     the problem he noted: ``Considering that Congress alone is 
     constitutionally invested with the power of changing our 
     condition from peace to war, I have thought it my duty to 
     await their authority for using force in any degree which 
     could be avoided.'' 1 Richardson 377.
       Military conflicts in the Mediterranean continued after 
     Jefferson left office. The Dey of Algiers made war against 
     U.S. citizens trading in that region and kept some in 
     captivity. With the conclusion of the War of 1812 with 
     England, President Madison recommended to Congress in 1815 
     that it declare war on Algiers: ``I recommend to Congress the 
     expediency of an act declaring the existence of a state of 
     war between the United States and the Dey and Regency of 
     Algiers, and of such provisions as may be requisite for a 
     vigorous prosecution of it to a successful issue.'' 2 
     Richardson 539. Instead of a declaration of war, Congress 
     passed legislation ``for the protection of the commerce of 
     the United States against the Algerine cruisers.'' The first 
     line of the statute read: ``Whereas the Dey of Algiers, on 
     the coast of Barbary, has commenced a predatory warfare 
     against the United States. . . .'' Congress gave Madison 
     authority to use armed vessels for the purpose of protecting 
     the commerce of U.S. seamen on the Atlantic, the 
     Mediterranean, and adjoining seas. U.S. vessels (both 
     governmental and private) could ``subdue, seize, and make 
     prize of all vessels, goods and effects of or belonging to 
     the Dey of Algiers.'' 3 Stat. 230 (1815).
       An American flotilla set sail for Algiers, where it 
     captured two of the Dey's ships and forced him to stop the 
     piracy, release all captives, and renounce the practice of 
     annual tribute payments. Similar treaties were obtained from 
     Tunis and Tripoli. By the end of 1815, Madison could report 
     to Congress on the successful termination of the war with 
     Algiers.


              legislative controls on prospective actions

       Can Congress only authorize and declare war, or may it also 
     establish limits on prospective presidential actions? The 
     statutes authorizing President Washington to ``protect the 
     inhabitants'' of the frontiers ``from hostile incursions of 
     the Indians'' were interpreted by the Washington 
     administration as authority for defensive, not offensive, 
     actions. 1 Stat. 96, Sec. 5 (1789); 1 Stat. 121, Sec. 16 
     (1790); 1 Stat. 222 (1791). Secretary of War Henry Knox wrote 
     to Governor Blount on October 9, 1792: ``The Congress which 
     possess the powers of declaring War will assemble on the 5th 
     of next Month--Until their judgments shall be made known it 
     seems essential to confine all your operations to defensive 
     measures.'' 4 The Territorial Papers of the United States 196 
     (Clarence Edwin Carter ed. 1936). President Washington 
     consistently held to this policy. Writing in 1793, he said 
     that any offensive operations against the Creek Nation must 
     await congressional action: ``The Constitution vests the 
     power of declaring war with Congress; therefore no offensive 
     expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they 
     have deliberated upon the subject, and authorized such a 
     measure.'' 33 The Writings of George Washington 73.
       The statute in 1792, upon which President Washington relied 
     for his actions in the Whiskey Rebellion, conditioned the use 
     of military force by the President upon an unusual judicial 
     check. The legislation said that whenever the United States 
     ``shall be invaded, or be in imminent danger of invasion from 
     any foreign nation or Indian tribe,'' the President may call 
     forth the state militias to repel such invasions and to 
     suppress insurrections.'' 1 Stat. 264, Sec. 1 (1792). 
     However, whenever federal laws were opposed and their 
     execution obstructed in any state, ``by combinations too 
     powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial 
     proceedings, or by the powers vested in the marshals by this 
     act,'' the President would have to be first notified of that 
     fact by an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court or by a 
     federal district judge. Only after that notice could the 
     President call forth the militia of the state to suppress the 
     insurrection. Id., Sec. 2.
       In the legislation authorizing the Quasi-War of 1798, 
     Congress placed limits on what President Adams could and 
     could not do. One statute authorized him to seize vessels 
     sailing to French ports. He acted beyond the terms of this 
     statute by issuing an order directing American ships to 
     capture vessels sailing to or from French ports. A naval 
     captain followed his order by seizing a Danish ship sailing 
     from a French port. He was sued for damages and the case came 
     to the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Marshall ruled for a 
     unanimous Court that President Adams had exceeded his 
     statutory authority. Little v. Barreme, 6 U.S. (2 Cr.) 169 
     (1804).
       The Neutrality Act of 1794 led to numerous cases before the 
     federal courts. In one of the significant cases defining the 
     power of Congress to restrict presidential war actions, a 
     circuit court in 1806 reviewed the indictment of an 
     individual who claimed that his military enterprise against 
     Spain ``was begun, prepared, and set on foot with the 
     knowledge and approbation of the executive department of the 
     government.'' United States v. Smith, 27 Fed. Cas. 1192, 1229 
     (C.C.N.Y. 1806) (No. 16,342). The court repudiated his claim 
     that a President could authorize military adventures that 
     violated congressional policy. Executive officials were not 
     at liberty to waive statutory provisions: ``if a private 
     individual, even with the knowledge and approbation of this 
     high and preeminent officer of our government [the 
     President], should set on foot such a military expedition, 
     how can be expect to be exonerated from the obligation of the 
     law?'' The court said that the President ``cannot control the 
     statute, nor dispense with its execution, and still less can 
     he authorize a person to do what the law forbids. If he 
     could, it would render the execution of the laws dependent on 
     his will and pleasure; which is a doctrine that has not been 
     set up, and will not meet with any supporters in our 
     government. In this particular, the law is paramount.'' The 
     President could not direct a citizen to conduct a war 
     ``against a nation with whom the United States are at 
     peace.'' Id. at 1230. The court asked: ``Does [the President] 
     possess the power of making war? That power is exclusively 
     vested in congress. . . . it is the exclusive province of 
     Congress to change a state of peace in a state of war. Id.

                          ____________________