The Role of Congress in Foreign Policy
CONGRESSMAN LEE HAMILTON
9th District, Indiana
Vol. XXXIII No. 47 November 25, 1998
Over the past several years I have seen broad policy areas in which Congress has made notable progress and has improved its efforts. Today, for example, we do a much better job of keeping the federal budget under control and we now have a budget surplus rather than deficits, approaching $300 billion annually, In other areas, however, Congress has not acted responsibly and effectively. One disappointment to me has been the role Congress has played in foreign policy. Our international agenda demands a sustained and sophisticated involvement by Congress. Yet what we have today is a Congress involved erratically, usually not constructively, and with little sophistication about the complexity of the problems we face.
Important role for Congress: The President takes the lead in foreign policy, but Congress has a central role to play. The Constitution gives both the President and Congress specific powers relating to foreign policy: congress has the power to declare war and the power of the purse, while the President is the Commander in Chief and head of the Executive Branch.
The ideal is not total cooperation between the two branches, but a creative tension out of which should come policies that better serve the American national interest and better reflect the values of the American people. Yet this shared responsibility for foreign policy requires a Congress that is able to act on foreign policy matters with effectiveness and competence. The recent performance of Congress in foreign policy gives me pause.
Often does too much and interferes: Congress will often get too involved in foreign policy issues, asserting itself unwisely and taking politically divisive or short-sighted actions.
That is most clear in its unilateralist tendency. Congress likes to go it alone. Congress developed and passed the Helms-Burton Act, which requires that we punish business entities in other countries for differing with American policies toward Cuba. This law with its unilateral sanctions has created huge problems with our friends and allies while achieving virtually nothing. The same is true of the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act initiated by Congress. The United States cannot continue to act unilaterally without doing serious damage to our relationships with our closest friends and allies, on whom we rely for support on other important foreign policy issues.
Congress has also interfered with important U.S. responsibilities, for example, refusing to pay our UN dues on time and in full, and fiercely resisting paying our share of the IMF quote increase, Congress, by and large, fails to recognize that we cannot get our way in these institutions if we treat them with disdain. Just a few weeks ago, the U.S., which provides about 25% of the UN budget, lost a bid for a seat on the UN committee that oversees the UN’s spending practices because other nations would not support a seat for the biggest deadbeat country in the UN.
Congress also plays an unhelpful role in foreign policy when it reflects narrow ethnic interests and when it engages in politically divisive actions on foreign policy, paying scant attention to the requirements of protecting and advancing broad U.S. national interests. Last year, for example, Congress brought forward nine anti-China bills, which had no chance of becoming law, largely to embarrass the President at a particularly delicate time in U.S.-China relations.
Often does too little and is timid: At other times, Congress will do too little in important foreign policy issues and will be timid in asserting its responsibility for U.S. foreign policy.
Congress has been particularly timid in exercising its constitutional responsibility to authorize military intervention. In almost every case over the past 15 years save for the Gulf War Congress has failed to go on record in granting prior authority for intervention. the list is long: Grenada, panama, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and earlier this year, Iraq. Congress has refused to take a stand. Sometimes we don’t even debate. Instead. Congress just leave it to the President to make the most difficult decision any government can make whether to intervene with miliary force.
Congress also shows it timidity when it falls back on unhelpful, gratuitous criticism of the President’s policies, without offering any constructive alternatives of its own. There is for, example, never a shortage of Members willing to criticize a President for his handling of the Middle East peach process. But few, if any, Members offer a road map of how they would move the peach process forward.
The problem here is not just one of Congress failing to meets in constitutional obligations, and wanting to have its cake and eat it too on difficult foreign policy issues. When Congress is absent from the decision-making process, we undermine the quality of the decision and the policy. The whole Executive Branch is tailored to say yes to the President. If he relies on his political appointees, the President will not receive independent advice. A principal purpose of Congress is to give a broader public airing of any issues. Because Members have a standing independent of Executive Branch control, they can offer the President unfiltered advice. When the President takes the advice of Congress into consideration, better policy emerges and the President has more support to carry it out.
Improved efforts: Certainly Congress at times does act responsibly on important foreign policy issues. It has, for example, played a generally helpful role to the President in supporting the broad objectives of American foreign policy in working for peace prosperity, and the values of democracy and freedom. But too often Congress has not contributed to finding solutions to the serious challenges in international affairs we face today. Congress has not yet developed a capacity for coherent, responsible action in the conduct of the nation’s foreign affairs. It has ample opportunity to asset its appropriate role in foreign policy if it wishes to do so.
Part of the blame also rests with the President. No administration with which I have served has ever consulted enough with Congress on important questions in U.S. foreign policy. The President must also articulate his foreign policy objectives with great precision and make a sustained effort to educate the American people about the connections between their lives and events around the world.
U.S. leadership on foreign policy requires a working relationship between Congress and the President that is civil and mutually respectful. Without dismissing our genuine political and ideological differences, Congress and the President must make a grater effort to work together, putting the U.S. national interest ahead of partisan and personal concern. In the end, there is no substitute for extensive consultation and mutual respect.
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