United States congressional defense committees

“ The Packard commission report urges the Congress to make a number of improvements in the way it deals with defense. The commission suggests, for example, that the Congress move from a 1-year to a 2-year budget cycle. It also urges the Congress to better focus its consideration of defense matters. Today there are some 40 congressional committees and subcommittees, each of which has some jurisdiction over defense. ”

“ Under the law of its creation, the Council of National Defense is not an executive body, its principal function being to supervise and direct investigations and make recommendations to the President and the heads of the executive departments with regard to a large variety of subjects. The advisory commission is thus advisory to a body which is itself advisory, and the subordinate bodies authorized to be created are collectors of data upon which advice can be formulated. ”

“ I think even though proponents, pro-Congress group of scholars who believe very strongly in the power of Congress during a time of war, even they acknowledge that with respect to initiation of hostilities, that only the Congress can declare war, but of course military force can be initiated if the United States has been attacked -- initiated by the president, if the United States has already been attacked or if there is an imminent threat to the United States. ”

“ It is true that a cult of disparagement exists, but that candid examination made by the Congress through its various committees has always reassured the country and demonstrated that it is maintaining the most adequate defensive forces in these present years that it has ever supported in time of peace. ”

“ Consistent with the President’s Interim National Security Strategic Guidance, the classified NDS sets out how the Department of Defense will contribute to advancing and safeguarding vital U.S. national interests—protecting the American people, expanding America’s prosperity, and realizing and defending our democratic values. ”

“ Congress has the resources and the power to inform itself, and is the appropriate forum where the conflicting pros and cons should have been presented and considered. But instead of a determination by Congress reflected in guiding standards of the types of facilities to which § 5 (a) (1) (D) should be applied, the statute provides for a resolution by the Secretary of Defense acting on his own accord. It is true that the Secretary presumably has at his disposal the information and expertise necessary to make reasoned judgments on which facilities are important to national security. ”

“ Make no mistake, the House defense bill is a reckless assault upon the national defense of the United States. It threatens our hopes for arms control and moves us back toward an era in policies which the American people emphatically rejected in the last two national elections. ”

“ It is unnecessary for present purposes to determine to what extent the President as Commander in Chief has constitutional power to create military commissions without the support of Congressional legislation. For here Congress has authorized trial of offenses against the law of war before such commissions. We are concerned only with the question whether it is within the constitutional power of the national government to place petitioners upon trial before a military commission for the offenses with which they are charged. ”

“ And the Supreme Court has said that those words, "all necessary and appropriate force," means that the Congress has given to the president of the United States the authority to engage in all the activities that are fundamental and incident to waging war. ”

“ The Standing Committee of the National People's Congress shall, pursuant to the Constitution, decide on the declaration of a state of war, decide on general national mobilization or partial mobilization, and exercise other constitutional national defense functions and powers. ”

“ This year, many people urged me to cut our defense spending further to pay for other government programs. I said no. The budget I send to Congress draws the line against further defense cuts. It protects the readiness and quality of our forces. Ultimately, the best strategy is to do that. We must not cut defense further. I hope the Congress without regard to party will support that position.
Ultimately, the best strategy to ensure our security and to build a durable peace is to support the advance of democracy elsewhere. Democracies don't attack each other. ”

“ During the next week the House debated and passed the bill for raising the army to ten thousand men, but on all sides the friends and opponents of the measure equally deprecated war. The report of a special committee in the Senate, April 16, expressed on that point the general feeling of Congress: [19] —
"With respect to a resort to war as a remedy for the evils experienced, the committee will offer no other reflection than that it is in itself so great an evil that the United States have wisely considered peace and honest neutrality as the best foundation of their general policy. ”

“ The Senate should pass the defense appropriations bill, which includes the largest increases in defense spending since the Reagan years. Our military needs to plan for a long war on terror and prepare for all the missions that lie ahead. The House passed its defense appropriations bill in June; now the Senate must make the defense of our country a top priority. ”

“ Millions upon millions of dollars have been spent in the United States in peace propagandism, and eloquent lungs have hoarsed themselves to defeat Congressional appropriations for defense, simply because the phrase, preparation for war, has been used instead of the phrase, preparation against war. ”

“ The staff of this committee should be nonpartisan and work for the entire committee and not for individual members. The other reforms we have suggested—for a National Counterterrorism Center and a National Intelligence Director—will not work if congressional oversight does not change too. Unity of effort in executive management can be lost if it is fractured by divided congressional oversight. ”

“ The NSC shall advise and assist the President in integrating all aspects of national security policy. Along with its subordinate committees, the NSC shall be the President’s principal means for coordinating executive departments and agencies in the development and implementation of national security policy, and in long-term strategic planning. ”

“ Integrated deterrence is enabled by combat-credible forces, backstopped by a safe, secure, and effective nuclear deterrent. Campaigning will strengthen deterrence and enable us to gain advantages against the full range of competitors’ coercive actions. The United States will operate forces, synchronize broader Department efforts, and align Department activities with other instruments of national power, to undermine acute forms of competitor coercion, complicate competitors’ military preparations, and develop our own warfighting capabilities together with Allies and partners. ”

“ It is therefore incumbent on us at every meeting to revise the condition of the militia, and to ask ourselves if it is prepared to repel a powerful enemy at every point of our territories exposed to invasion. Some of the States have paid a laudable attention to this object, but every degree of neglect is to be found among others. Congress alone having the power to produce an uniform state of preparation in this great organ of defense, the interests which they so deeply feel in their own and their country's security will present this as among the most important objects of their deliberation. ”

“ The proper method for ending the war is for Congress to meet its responsibility to deauthorize and defend the war. Micromanaging a troop deployment is not the answer since it overstays the bounds of Congressional authority. ”

“ The elimination of collective bargaining rights is not the purpose Congress had this year when it enacted legislation in support of the hundreds of thousands of civilian employees who support the mission and operations of the Department of Defense. I am fully aware that DoD's civilian employees are the Department's backbone, without which our troops would never be able to conduct operations in an effective manner. Never before has that support function been so important to all Americans, as we fight two wars simultaneously in Iraq and Afghanistan. ”

“ Another important result of his conferences with Congress was the establishment of a war office. Military affairs had hitherto been referred in Congress to committees casually appointed, and had consequently been subject to great irregularity and neglect. Henceforth a permanent committee, entitled the Board of War and Ordnance, was to take cognizance of them. The first board was composed of five members—John Adams, Colonel Benjamin Harrison, Roger Sherman, James Wilson, and Edward Rutledge; with Richard Peters as secretary. It went into operation on the 12th of June. ”

“ I shall ask this Congress for greatly increased new appropriations and authorizations to carry on what we have begun.
I also ask this Congress for authority and for funds sufficient to manufacture additional munitions and war supplies of many kinds, to be turned over to those nations which are now in actual war with aggressor nations.
Our most useful and immediate role is to act as an arsenal for them as well as for ourselves. They do not need man power, but they do need billions of dollars worth of the weapons of defense. ”

“ Memorandum, Secretary of Defense for Secretary of the Army, "Authority to Approve District of Columbia Government Requests for District of Columbia National Guard Support Assistance," (Dec. 30, 2021) , available at https://www.airandspaceforces.com/austinstreamlines-authority-to-deploy-dc-national-guard. ”

“ The power to declare war, to raise and support armies, to provide and maintain a navy, and to call forth the militia to execute the laws, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions was conferred upon Congress as means to provide for the common defense and to protect a territory and a population now widespread and vastly multiplied. As incidental to and indispensable for the exercise of this power, it must sometimes be necessary to construct military roads and protect harbors of refuge. To appropriations by Congress for such objects no sound objection can be raised. ”