April 11, 2023
Letters to the Editor
The Washington Post
Re: “A surprise from Congress: It wants to be an equal branch again,” (Column by Ramesh Ponnuru, A21, April 11, 2023)
To the Editor:
Ramesh Ponnuru’s swooning over anemic congressional measures to lasso limitless presidential power reads like a scene from the film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Repealing the twin authorizations for military force in Iraq fails to challenge the White House’s usurpation of the war power beginning with President Harry Truman and Korea in 1950. When Congress repealed the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution purportedly justifying the Vietnam War in 1971, President Richard Nixon continued the conflict without breaking stride by counter-constitutionally insisting that the war power was entrusted to the Commander in Chief. Congress will use the meaningless repeals as an excuse to do nothing of substance to handcuff presidential wars, for instance, brandishing the power of the purse to prohibit expenditures for wars not declared by Congress. That was how Congress definitively ended the Vietnam War on August 15, 1973.
Congress ended the pandemic emergency proclaimed by Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden but scampered away from defining national emergencies in the National Emergencies Act of 1976. Ending the pandemic emergency still leaves the President with infinite power to declare national emergencies in the future.
Unilateral surrender of congressional powers to the White House continues unabated.
Sincerely,
Bruce Fein, associate deputy attorney general under President Reagan, 1981-83, and author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy
300 New Jersey Avenue, N.W., Suite 900
Washington, D.C. 20001
Phone: 202-465-8728; 703-963-4968 (M)
Email: bruce@feinpoints.com