On Friday, the House took up the Boehner resolution and passed it by a vote of 268 to 145, with nearly all Republicans supporting it, along with 45 Democrats. Only then did the Republican leadership permit a vote on the Kucinich resolution, which was defeated by nearly the same margin.
Boehner made it clear that he supported the war in Libya and merely objected to the high-handed refusal of the White House to get a congressional rubber stamp for the military action. "This resolution puts the president on notice," he declared. "He has a chance to get this right. If he doesn't, we will make it right."
Other top Republicans declared their support for the war. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Republican of Florida) said, "We must not let our frustration with the president's contempt for Congress cloud our judgment and result in our taking action that would harm our standing, our credibility and our interests in the region."
In the successive debates on the two resolutions, both Republicans and Democrats denounced the Obama administration's refusal to abide by the deadline set by the War Powers Act, after initially complying with the act by notifying Congress formally on March 21 that he had ordered air strikes against Libya.
Under the War Powers Act, the president must obtain congressional backing for a war within 60 days of beginning military action. If he fails to win congressional approval, he has an additional 30 days to withdraw all US forces from combat. Obama allowed the 60-day deadline to expire May 21 without even acknowledging his legal obligation to Congress.
In a briefing to reporters aboard Air Force One, White House spokesman Josh Earnest called both the Boehner and Kucinich resolutions "unnecessary and unhelpful." He declared, "The administration believes strongly in the concept of consulting with leaders in Congress. It is the view of this administration that we've acted in accordance with the War Powers Act because of this regular consultation."
If a spokesman for George W. Bush had made such a declaration, the liberal wing of the Democratic Party and its editorial representatives, from the New York Times to the Nation, would have fulminated against the obvious sophistry of equating "consulting with leaders" and the legal requirement to obtain a congressional vote sanctioning military action. Kucinich and others would have rushed to file impeachment resolutions.
No such action is threatened against Barack Obama, unless it comes from the Tea Party wing of the House Republicans, who raised the unconstitutional character of the Libya war in the course of Friday's debate. None of these Republicans, of course, raised any objection to the trampling on constitutional norms under the Bush administration.
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