Boehner and Kucinich compare sizes

Last Friday Speaker of the House John A. Boehner, R-OH, finally put his foot down on American involvement in Libya.

Boehner just wants to make love not war, or at least that’s how he wants to be portrayed.

He and 267 other house representatives voted yes on a resolution stating, “the President shall not deploy, establish or maintain the presence of units and members of the United States Armed Forces on the ground in Libya, and for other purposes.”

Thank goodness he had the forward thinking to establish this firm position on a war with Libya. This was something only Boehner could pull off.

Though Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-OH, tried to pass a similar resolution the week before, it was neither angry enough nor was it long enough.

All it had was legal justification and a request for all American Armed Forces to be withdrawn from Libya.

Boehner’s resolution was not only longer, but thicker as well.

It requires the administration to give Boehner some numbers, graphs and other easily misconstrued documents.

Kucinich’s response to his constituents was likely along the lines of saying “baby, it’s not the size of the resolution, but the motion of he ocean.”

Now I don’t want to say the resolution is a bad idea. I’m glad we are establishing this stance now, and a resolution is really all Congress can do.

I merely intend on nitpicking the presentation of Kucinich and Boehner’s pissing contest.

Most people don’t know this, but congressional resolutions have zero power.

All they do is kindly tell the American people, the president or whomever the intended recipient of the resolution what Congress thinks.

Resolutions have no legal authority against anybody.

Most are simply expressing a collective opinion. Think of them as liking a post on Facebook.

So here’s the breakdown of the differences between the resolutions.Kucinich’s resolution was quick and to the point — about 150 words  — whereas Boehner’s hovers around 1,000 thunder-stealing words that would make Zeus jealous.

A fundamental difference between the two documents is the type of resolution proposed.

Kucinich’s was a concurrent resolution and Boehner’s was a simple resolution.

A simple resolution, a la Boehner, focuses the efforts toward one house of Congress, whereas a concurrent resolution is an opinion held by both houses.

This means a concurrent resolution requires more solidarity and therefore holds more political girth.

Boehner saw Kucinich had something good going, so he decided to take the idea for himself.

Passing a simple resolution makes it look like the Democrat controlled Senate was silent on the issue, while it was the GOP controlled House of Representatives who put the President “in check.”

We got us a big ol’ case of politicking before us.

If we look at the content of the two resolutions we can see another striking difference.

Kucinich wanted the immediate withdrawal of all American Armed Forces from Libya.

He wants all of them home, including the remote controlled predator-drones.

Kucinich even respects his robo-constituents. 

The resolution is justified by citing the War Powers Resolution (50 U.S.C. 1544(c)), which requires the president to have congressional consent for the use of Armed Forces.

Boehner makes it a point to mention “ground forces”  as if we even had any out there, but we don’t.

And it mentions neither the War Powers Resolution nor does it mention any other reason why the president should have to comply.

The resolution essentially expresses an opinion without evidence.

Not to say it is not justified, but the least Boehner could do was cite his legal sources.

I mean shit; I cannot publish an article without fact checking even if it is common knowledge.

But his resolution goes on to require the administration to send in report after report about the conflict thus far. 

I feel bad for the administration interns who will have to write those reports and the House interns who will have to summarize those reports in memo form.

Mostly because nobody above them is going to read them.

The reports are for show, just like the whole idea of his resolution in the first place.

­— nicjacob@indiana.edu