The Constitution establishes a system of checks and balances to prevent any branch of government, including the executive, from having unchecked power. Yet, Congress has consistently failed in its constitutional and statutory duty to review 41 national emergency declarations, including the national emergency regarding Syria.
Section 202 of the National Emergencies Act (NEA) legally requires Congress to review declared national emergencies declared by the president every six months. Without reviewing national emergencies, Congress is allowing these declarations to act as slush funds. It enables the president to spend untold sums of money, with no transparency or accountability. Such declarations also unlock 135 statutory provisions for the president that, if invoked, could have profound and troubling implications that have the potential to violate Americans’ civil liberties. Some of the potential violations to our civil liberties include drafting Americans into the military without their consent and freezing their assets and bank accounts.
I previously brought a War Powers resolution to the floor of the House of Representatives to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, highlighting that the futility of our excessive entanglement in the region’s great power competition was not making life better for Syrians, while also endangering the lives of our service members present there. Yet, my plea was dismissed on a bipartisan basis, leaving U.S. service members and contractors as sitting ducks, which has led to the unnecessary loss of American lives.
Now, this week, I came to the floor to offer a joint resolution to terminate the national emergency regarding Syria. Since this national emergency was first declared by President George W. Bush in 2004, this was the first time a vote has been taken on its continuation. If it had passed, the resolution would have reasserted Congress’ statutory duty and constitutional oversight role to review decades-long national emergency declarations, but unfortunately, it was also not adopted. The vote was 24-394—not even close.
Over the last nearly 20 years, the United States has become the neighborhood Crime Watch of certain areas in Syria.
If ending the national emergency regarding Syria is being soft on Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, the logic significantly undermines the idea that the 2004 national emergency declaration was an anti-Assad tool. If the national emergency nearly two decades ago was intended to be Assad kryptonite, it’s been the worst Assad kryptonite you could ever imagine. Assad has never been stronger.
If the principal argument against ending the national emergency regarding Syria is due to still wanting to maintain sanctions against bad actors, the executive has many other existing authorities to sanction regimes. Also, let’s not forget that Congress can always vote to impose sanctions.
Nothing should be allowed to be an emergency for 20 years. If this were really an emergency, there probably would have been a cataclysmic event of biblical proportion before reaching 20 years. And if it’s still an emergency—20 years later—it’s a chronic condition. The United States cannot be the world’s policeman, and we cannot be the world’s piggy bank.
Matt Gaetz represents Florida’s first congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives.
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