President Barack Obama could not ask for a more helpful “opposition” party in charge of the House of Representatives. For the second time this month House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has maneuvered to prevent Congress from demanding that Obama abide by the Constitution’s requirement that wars be initiated by the legislative branch, not the executive. Furthermore, in seeking a middle ground between the patently irreconcilable options of enforcing the Constitution and adhering to the bipartisan consensus in favor of untrammeled presidential intervention abroad, Boehner has ensured that Obama’s illegal war in Libya continues indefinitely.
Indeed, as Politico put it, the House of Representatives’ latest expression of opposition to Obama’s war is “a rebuke the White House can live with.” On Friday the House voted overwhelmingly — 295 to 123, with 70 Democrats among the 295 No voters — against a resolution supporting the Libya mission that is similar to a Senate resolution sponsored by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.). An hour later, however, it also turned down a measure that would have prohibited funding of certain operations in Libya. That bill failed, 238 to 180, a victim of Boehner’s attempts at compromise.
According to The Hill, Boehner had originally intended to have the House vote on both the resolution authorizing the war and one calling for its termination. However, says the paper, “after a closed-door conference meeting on Wednesday,” the House leadership replaced the anti-war resolution with a bill that merely restricted funding for the war to “support operations like search and rescue, aerial refueling, operational planning, and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance,” according to the New York Times. The watered-down resolution, which Boehner called “a sensible approach,” satisfied neither hawks nor doves — nor, for that matter, constitutionalists such as Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) — and deservedly went down to defeat along with the pro-war resolution.
Paul, naturally, voted against the resolution supporting the war since the operation is inconsistent with the Constitution. At the same time, he also voted against the bill that would have restricted the war’s funding, pointing out that such funding is already illegal and that “instead of ending the war against Libya, this bill would legalize nearly everything the president is currently doing there.”
