Joe Pitts Quotes

The way I read the Constitution,. the Congress is paid a salary to determine whether we should go to war ... Therefore, I don't think Congress is earning its money.

Since the 1st World War, U. S. Presidents have 18 times asked the Congress for authority to go to war or use military force. The Presidents have never been turned down by Congress.

We were having problems with the War Powers Act, so I hesitate to use the term war.

Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion … and you allow him to make war at pleasure. … If today he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may see no probability he would say to you, “Be silent!, I see if you don’t.”

In the due exercise of your official power, in strictest accordance with law and the Constitution, you can deprive the enemy of that which, above all else, has given, and still gives him, aid and comfort.

Again, in Wag the Dog, war has to be declared by an act of congress. But if you go to war, you don't have to declare war. You're just at war and we did that, which is not legal.

But do I think that our actions in anyway violate the War Powers Resolution, the answer is no.

No man has the right to use the great powers of the Presidency to lead the people, indirectly, into war.

Under our Constitution the Congress alone has the power to declare war.

The respective powers of the President and Congress of the United States, in the case of war with foreign powers are yet undetermined. Perhaps they can never be defined.

The Congress decides when to make war and the President decides how to make war.

The power to make war is vested in Congress and not in the President. Congress has no constitutional authority to grant such authority to the president.

We in America should see that no man is ever given, no matter how gradually or how noble and excellent the man, the power to put this country into a war

The involvement of the government in military adventures always results in the expansion, at least temporarily, of Presidential power.

We have gone into a war, an unelected president sending us into a war that the Congress frankly had no right, I believe, to authorize.

Speaker John Boehner complained that Barack Obama ordered the U.S. military into combat in Libya without clearly defining the mission to the American people and Congress. See, apparently, you're only allowed to do that when invading Iraq.

The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.

While Congress saw some need to loosen the standard in the initial days of a war, it wanted the president to comply with FISA in carrying out surveillance in the United States.

Barack Obama is not a man of The Gut, and it is driving official Washington crazy. This is a good thing, because resisting The Gut is what the Constitution is all about, especially in its war powers, which this president is conspicuously contemplative about exercising, at least in every context except launching drones.

President Bush has said that he does not need approval from the UN to wage war, and I'm thinking, well, hell, he didn't need the approval of the American voters to become president, either.

We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation’s citizens.

Checks and balances, in time of war, are more important than ever.

The constitution has never greatly bothered any wartime President.

If Mr. Roosevelt can do what he likes without consulting Congress, and we give him our boys, God alone knows what he will do with them.

Without the authority of Congress, the President cannot fire a hostile gun in any case except to repel the attacks of the enemy.