War Powers Amendment (Amendment at vote)

[Lumine]

Can't I least have the time to defend the actual project? As Nix suggested, I started some research on the War Powers Act proposal in 2009 and the War Powers Act of 1973, and I realized both of them never really addressed the issue of ambiguity when it came to declaring war. They never achieved a significant balance and they were filled with so many loopholes the Supreme Court refused to rule on this, despite being unconstitutional in several ways (most Presidents shared this view). As a result, I decided to simply the process by getting rid of the War Powers Act and replacing it with a more specific plan on the Constitution with the use of two new constitutional mechanisms.

Thus, we replace "declare" with authorize to put an emphasis on the Senate being the one to give the approval and the administration to actually run the war. I envisioned two different mechanisms for this: first we have the declaration of war in case we are fighting another nation (the invasion of Iraq in 2003 would require one of these), and the authorization of force in case the enemy is harder to define or the circumstances are far different than war against a formal nation (in this case, an intervention to help an ally or fight a terrorist group, like ISIS and the current situation on Iraq). Plus, I have also addressed the issue of giving too much power to the President by having him and the SoEA report to the Senate, and the Senate will retain as well the power to stop the war to balance things out. On the other hand, we don't want a President who can't do anything in case of an emergency, so his powers will be amended to allow him the use of limited combat operations in the cases listed in the new clause.

Any comments?

(I consider the amendment to be hostile.)

[Lumine]

I can explain my amendment:

I think any armed conflict the government is engaging in should have to be authorized by the senate.

I think the in support of a sovereign nation I think is redundant.

And the briefing part is unenforceable, and even if it was, should be dealt with through legislation.

The briefing part I can understand (and I will probably seek to address that with another bill should this pass), and I'd like to think that everything has to be authorized as well (which is why this proposal is much more dovish than the proposed 2009 War Powers Act), but surely we must recognize that there are times in which the government has to react quickly to prevent an imminent attack or threat against Atlasian assets (which would mean a contradiction between the changes made to the powers of the Senate and the powers of the Senate). If we deny the President the possibility to react with force against certain rebel or terrorist groups I fear we will only endanger ourselves.

[Lumine]

I can explain my amendment:

I think any armed conflict the government is engaging in should have to be authorized by the senate.

I think the in support of a sovereign nation I think is redundant.

And the briefing part is unenforceable, and even if it was, should be dealt with through legislation.

The briefing part I can understand (and I will probably seek to address that with another bill should this pass), and I'd like to think that everything has to be authorized as well (which is why this proposal is much more dovish than the proposed 2009 War Powers Act), but surely we must recognize that there are times in which the government has to react quickly to prevent an imminent attack or threat against Atlasian assets (which would mean a contradiction between the changes made to the powers of the Senate and the powers of the Senate). If we deny the President the possibility to react with force against certain rebel or terrorist groups I fear we will only endanger ourselves.

Can you describe any hypotheticals that Article II, Section 2, Clause 4 fails to cover?

Well, my main concern was related to the possibility of a loophole by getting rid of the "with combat operations lasting longer than a week", specially since we don't want to go through the grey constitutional area we faced in my earlier Iraq bill.

[Lumine]

Nay.

Still, I understand Nix's point of view and I will try to correct a few issues after this amendment either passes or fails (and yes, I will probably get rid of the briefings since most people seem to think they are unnecessary or unpractical).

[Lumine]

Bump!

[Lumine]

Well, I certainly got the message about the briefings, so I want to focus on what Yankee and Nix spoke about, that of the limits that should be placed on the President in order to use military force in case of an emergency. As it stands, the argument can be made that the President can do pretty much what he wants by interpreting Clause 4 as he desires, so I'm proposing a simple change to regulate Clause 4 by using the suggestion of the SoEA of allowing three weeks for the President to act in light of how much time can the Senate take to authorize (or not) war in certain situations. I don't want to propose it as an amendment yet to avoid making a mistake, so any thoughts on this?

You must be logged in to read this quote.

[Lumine]

I don't like the idea of giving the President the power to deploy troops for any length of time without the Senate first giving the go-ahead, but that's just me.

I'm not necessarily a fan of that as well, but what happens when we need to act right away in order to save lives or defend Atlasia from an imminent attack? Waiting for weeks in the Senate could potentially make the difference, and with a limit of three weeks the President would be constrained to send massive amounts of troops through the globe.

[Lumine]

I'd support making it such that an emergency resolution like the Iraq one didn't need to wait in the queue.

But the fact that they take so long to be debated is hardly surprising, seeing as they have no deadline- the time spent on them expands depending on the deadline.

Look at confirmation hearings- if they were not strictly limited the senate could spend years debating them, but the deadline forces a decision.

Yet another reason to change the Senate rules, I must say. Hopefully the rules that Nix proposed will reach the Senate floor soon in order to regulate the proposed mechanism (the authorization, the declaration and the emergency resolutions as well). In the meantime I think going with three weeks a realistic idea in terms of what can be achieved in Atlasia, and the examples put forward by the SoEA make that evident until we can change the rules. Thus, I will turn my earlier proposition into a formal amendment.

[Lumine]

Well, since there's no further comments I will formally propose the amendment. I understand Bore's concerns, but I think that leaving a period of time that is too short without changing the rules could cause a lot of trouble.

[Lumine]

The three weeks period is bound to cause some controversy, but I feel it's still a lot better than what we have now in the constitution. Thus, and since I don't see how to improve the language I ask for a final vote.

[Lumine]

Aye.