Tuesday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said the evidence that Iran was an imminent threat to the United States was not there.
Co-host Joe Kernen said, “You have such a tough job. I asked Senator Scott, and he said, I love Senator Paul because you never waver, but everybody wavers. I was going to ask you about war powers, and the Constitution is messy, and to stick with it as you do in the real world, it’s hard. I don’t know why you even have this job. It must be so difficult at this point for you, right? It’s a pain.”
Paul said, “If not me, who will do it? Somebody needs to do it. And people say, ‘Oh, be on the team.’ There’s enough people on the team. There needs to be somebody not on the team on occasion who says, ” You know what, we have to vote on the initiation of war, it’s our obligation. And that’s what our founders put in there, because they didn’t want all the power in one person.”
Kernen said, “Right, but you look at how many times, you know, the War Powers Act was essentially violated, you wonder why people say, well, it was, you know, Libya, Kosovo, all these other things. It just seems like, de facto, it’s not relevant anymore or something.”
Paul said, “The interesting thing about the War Powers Act is it’s misreported all the time. It’s misreported it as a reporting, requirement that after 60 days, the president needs to report. Well, people don’t read the whole War Powers Act. War Powers Act only says there’s three instances when a president can go to war, a declaration by Congress, use of authorization of force by Congress or an imminent threat.”
He added, “So really, the debate now should be is a 47-year-old conflict and imminent threat. Were there changes in their nuclear program that made this an imminent threat? And I don’t think the evidence is there that there was an imminent threat that would allow the president to go to war on his own.”
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