[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 186 (Tuesday, November 27, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7123-S7124]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                         Remembering Jim Hansen

  Mr. LEE. Mr. President, earlier this month, Utah lost one of our very 
finest--former Congressman Jim Hansen, a great leader, an amazing 
husband and father, and a fantastic, loyal friend.
  It is my privilege to honor his life today. Jim's first and most 
important rule for getting involved in politics was ``get involved 
because you have a cause, and not simply because you want a job.'' In 
fact, his own motivation to first run for local office was with the 
objective of improving the local water system in his small town of 
Farmington, UT, where the water supply was sometimes dirty and 
sometimes even nonexistent.
  Though he had lived in Farmington, UT, for only a few years at the 
time, he was elected to the Farmington City Council in 1961, and he 
oversaw the installation of a new utility system--no small feat for 
that small town. That water system allowed the community to grow and to 
flourish, just as it continues to do to this very day. Thus began Jim 
Hansen's 42 years in public service.
  After serving on the city council in Farmington for 12 years, Jim was 
elected to the Utah House of Representatives in 1973. He worked hard 
and eventually rose to the position of speaker of the house during his 
final term. It was then that Jim launched his congressional bid for 
Utah's 1st Congressional District, defeating five-term incumbent Gunn 
McKay in 1980. He got right to work in representing the citizens of 
Utah--this time at the Federal level. Among his proudest 
accomplishments were serving on the Base Realignment and Closure 
Commission and on the House's Natural Resources Committee. Jim took 
great pride in helping save Hill Air Force Base, in Northern Utah, from 
closure. Whenever he would hear a jet roaring overhead at a decibel 
level loud enough to break the windows, he would tell his children, 
predictably: That is just the sound of freedom. You are lucky to hear 
and live under that sound every day.

  A great lover of the outdoors, so too was he proud of saving the 
environment from environmentalists, as he would say. Jim often sparred 
with environmentalists about wilderness issues and championed multiple-
use policies for public lands, although he was also a sponsor of the 
1984 Utah Wilderness Act, which designated wilderness in U.S. forest 
areas.
  Ever a staunch Republican and always a man of humor, Jim Hansen 
delighted in reciting his own version of Proverbs 22:6. He would say: 
``Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will 
vote Republican.'' Yet Jim was always known for being able to work 
across the aisle and was well respected by his Democratic colleagues. 
He served as the chairman of the House Ethics Committee during a 
partisan crisis among House Members over the investigation into former 
Speaker Newt Gingrich. Both parties, at the time, trusted him to handle 
any investigations fairly and impartially.
  For 22 years, he tirelessly served the First District of Utah in the 
U.S. House of Representatives, becoming Utah's longest serving 
Congressman. After he announced his retirement in 2002--still at the 
top of his game--he said in an interview that he wanted to leave behind 
a legacy of hard work. Indeed, Jim Hansen did.
  Not only was Jim hard-working, but he was also immensely generous. He 
did not keep his success for himself but for years offered mentorship 
to anyone who sought to navigate the political waters.
  I myself was lucky enough to call Jim a mentor and a friend. When I 
first considered running for the Senate in 2010, he met with me at 
length and gave me a whole lot of very helpful advice and 
encouragement. Even though I was a newcomer with very little chance of 
success, he couldn't have been more generous with his time, with his 
wisdom, or with his words of support. When I announced my candidacy, he 
stood by me and offered his full endorsement. So many others were also 
blessed by Jim's friendship and his loyalty.
  A lesser known story that illustrates the quality of Jim's character 
involves his longtime friend Norm Bangerter, with whom he served in the 
State legislature. In 1978, both men had their sights set on the house 
speaker's post. They didn't want to run against each other, so they 
made a deal that Norm would step aside so long as Jim agreed to step 
aside in the future if they were ever interested in running for the 
same position again.
  Jim hoped to become Governor of Utah. In the 1980s, after Jim had 
been serving in the House of Representatives for a few years, there was 
an opening for a Republican to take back the governorship, and everyone 
expected Jim to make a play for it, except that Norm wanted to run. So 
what did Jim do? Well, he stepped aside and allowed his friend to run 
for and to eventually win that position--a position that Norm Bangerter 
then held for 8 years. That was the caliber of Jim Hansen's character. 
He was a man of humility and integrity, who honored his word and always 
put others before himself.
  I would be remiss if I didn't also mention Jim's piety in the truest, 
purest sense of that word. In addition to having a deep loyalty to his 
country and to his State, he had a deep loyalty to his family and his 
church. Jim married Ann Burgoyne in 1958, which he considered wisely to 
be the smartest choice he ever made. Their family grew to include 5 
children and eventually 14 grandchildren and 1 great-grandchild.
  Grandpa Jim was the center of their family, and his love for them 
animated so much of his life. His grandchildren fondly remember his 
jokes, stories, and genuine, unmistakable zest for life. His 
granddaughter Anna recounted that on Jim's 80th birthday, when he 
insisted on going water-skiing, he had waded into the lake while 
wearing his slacks and socks, with his grandchildren sloshing behind 
him, to fish out the ChapStick tubes and Tic Tac packs that were 
floating out of his pockets. That, of course, was Jim Hansen--full of 
life and spirit until the very end.
  Before his involvement in politics and after he served in the Navy 
during the Korean war, Jim went on a mission for the Church of Jesus 
Christ of Latter-day Saints for 2 years. He also served as the bishop 
of the Farmington 2nd Ward and as the president of the Davis Stake. One 
of his jobs as bishop was to supervise the Farmington South Stake 
Center, which is where loved ones and dignitaries gathered to honor his 
life just this past week.
  It is only fitting that we pay tribute to this honorable man, who so 
faithfully and nobly served God, family, and country throughout his 
entire life. Jim Hansen will be sorely missed by his family, friends, 
Utahns, and all those whose lives were touched and changed for the 
better by him. I have no doubt

[[Page S7124]]

that his legacy will live on for many years to come.


War Powers Resolution to End Unauthorized U.S. Military Involvement in 
                                 Yemen

  Mr. President, the U.S. Constitution makes unmistakably clear the 
fact that in order to declare war, one must go through Congress. There 
are good reasons for this requirement. Whenever we go to war, we are 
making the greatest of moral decisions--decisions that will imperil the 
lives of those involved in that war, including and especially the brave 
young men and women who represent us in uniform and who fight to 
protect our freedom. The costs of war--and I speak not only of the 
economic costs but especially of the deep human costs associated with 
war--are such that these decisions should never be made lightly. It is 
for this reason that the Founding Fathers wisely put this power into 
the hands of those occupying the branch of government most accountable 
to the people at the most regular intervals.
  You cannot declare war without going through Congress. Sadly, over 
time, some of this power has been neglected--neglected by the very 
Congress to which the power properly constitutionally belongs. Under 
the Constitution to which every Member of this body has sworn an oath 
to uphold, to protect, and defend, it is wrong to go into war without 
Congress's directing it, ordering it, declaring it. Yet, sadly, 
tragically, unconstitutionally, I believe, the United States has been 
involved as a co-belligerent in a civil war half a world away in Yemen, 
involved in connection with a Kingdom of Saudi Arabia-led coalition 
against the Houthi rebels.
  What, one might ask, is the interest of the United States in this 
war? What is it about this particular civil war in Yemen that is 
important to keep the American people safe? That is a question that has 
never been fully answered. In fact, it is a question that has never 
been answered by the only branch of government that is capable 
constitutionally of making that assessment, of answering that question. 
We have never answered it.
  It is not just a mere formality that we go through when we require 
Congress to declare war. It is about the debate that that starts, the 
conversation that occurs among the American people, the accountability 
that each Member of the Senate and each Member of the House of 
Representatives has to his or her constituents. It is about the fact 
that we have to be able and willing to look the American people in the 
eye--even our own constituents, our own friends and neighbors, even and 
especially those who are the parents and loved ones of the men and 
women who will be at the battlefront and will be asked, potentially, to 
pay the ultimate price for defending freedom. We have to be willing to 
do that. Yet we haven't because, for the last 4 years, we have been 
fighting someone else's war without a declaration of war by Congress, 
without an authorization for the use of military force by Congress.
  What, then, is the remedy? There are a number of things that we could 
do and that we should do. Among them are the procedures outlined by and 
provided in the War Powers Act. The War Powers Act gives us the ability 
to halt our military involvement where Congress deems it inappropriate.
  A few months ago, Senator Sanders and I ran a resolution to do 
precisely that--availing ourselves of the benefits of the War Powers 
Act. Sadly, that measure was narrowly defeated; it was tabled; it was 
halted from moving forward. It has been filed again. We are going to 
have an opportunity again very soon, perhaps as early as tomorrow, to 
vote on that yet again.
  In the meantime, what has changed? We have continued to fight this 
war still in an unconstitutional posture, still without the American 
people having been adequately consulted, still without the American 
people's elected Senators and Representatives having made a decision to 
go to war, still without the opportunity for us to look in the eye our 
neighbors, our constituents, and the parents and family members and 
loved ones of our brave men and women in uniform who are asked to fight 
these battles and to tell them why it is that we are asking for this 
potential sacrifice of American blood and treasure. We have not done 
those things.
  Since that time, we have seen some very unsettling realities unfold 
within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with credible intelligence 
regarding the Crown Prince's involvement in and ordering of the death 
of Mr. Khashoggi. We now have not only the eyes of the American people 
on Saudi Arabia--more importantly, we have the eyes of people all 
around the world on the United States of America. It is not just about 
the death of Mr. Khashoggi, but Mr. Khashoggi's death and the way it 
came about and the way it is alleged and supposed to have been ordered 
by the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia says something about us if we 
proceed undeterred in our fighting of an unconstitutional war on behalf 
of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It is not just what the American people 
think about Saudi Arabia or about us in Washington; it is also about 
what the rest of the world will think about the United States of 
America if we turn a blind eye to this and if we continue to fight an 
undeclared, unauthorized, unconstitutional war that has no apparent 
connection to the safety of the American people, to the security of the 
American homeland.
  This is why I respectfully--and with all of the urgency I am capable 
of communicating--implore my colleagues to support this resolution, to 
support the resolution to get us out of fighting Saudi Arabia's war in 
Yemen. It is not our war, not our security, not on our watch.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.