Executive Session
Floor Speech
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Mr. LEE. Mr. President, earlier this month, Utah lost one of our very finest--former Congressman Jim Hansen, a great leader, an amazing husband and father, and a fantastic, loyal friend.
It is my privilege to honor his life today. Jim's first and most important rule for getting involved in politics was ``get involved because you have a cause, and not simply because you want a job.'' In fact, his own motivation to first run for local office was with the objective of improving the local water system in his small town of Farmington, UT, where the water supply was sometimes dirty and sometimes even nonexistent.
Though he had lived in Farmington, UT, for only a few years at the time, he was elected to the Farmington City Council in 1961, and he oversaw the installation of a new utility system--no small feat for that small town. That water system allowed the community to grow and to flourish, just as it continues to do to this very day. Thus began Jim Hansen's 42 years in public service.
After serving on the city council in Farmington for 12 years, Jim was elected to the Utah House of Representatives in 1973. He worked hard and eventually rose to the position of speaker of the house during his final term. It was then that Jim launched his congressional bid for Utah's 1st Congressional District, defeating five-term incumbent Gunn McKay in 1980. He got right to work in representing the citizens of Utah--this time at the Federal level. Among his proudest accomplishments were serving on the Base Realignment and Closure Commission and on the House's Natural Resources Committee. Jim took great pride in helping save Hill Air Force Base, in Northern Utah, from closure. Whenever he would hear a jet roaring overhead at a decibel level loud enough to break the windows, he would tell his children, predictably: That is just the sound of freedom. You are lucky to hear and live under that sound every day.
A great lover of the outdoors, so too was he proud of saving the environment from environmentalists, as he would say. Jim often sparred with environmentalists about wilderness issues and championed multiple- use policies for public lands, although he was also a sponsor of the 1984 Utah Wilderness Act, which designated wilderness in U.S. forest areas.
Ever a staunch Republican and always a man of humor, Jim Hansen delighted in reciting his own version of Proverbs 22:6. He would say: ``Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will vote Republican.'' Yet Jim was always known for being able to work across the aisle and was well respected by his Democratic colleagues. He served as the chairman of the House Ethics Committee during a partisan crisis among House Members over the investigation into former Speaker Newt Gingrich. Both parties, at the time, trusted him to handle any investigations fairly and impartially.
For 22 years, he tirelessly served the First District of Utah in the U.S. House of Representatives, becoming Utah's longest serving Congressman. After he announced his retirement in 2002--still at the top of his game--he said in an interview that he wanted to leave behind a legacy of hard work. Indeed, Jim Hansen did.
Not only was Jim hard-working, but he was also immensely generous. He did not keep his success for himself but for years offered mentorship to anyone who sought to navigate the political waters.
I myself was lucky enough to call Jim a mentor and a friend. When I first considered running for the Senate in 2010, he met with me at length and gave me a whole lot of very helpful advice and encouragement. Even though I was a newcomer with very little chance of success, he couldn't have been more generous with his time, with his wisdom, or with his words of support. When I announced my candidacy, he stood by me and offered his full endorsement. So many others were also blessed by Jim's friendship and his loyalty.
A lesser known story that illustrates the quality of Jim's character involves his longtime friend Norm Bangerter, with whom he served in the State legislature. In 1978, both men had their sights set on the house speaker's post. They didn't want to run against each other, so they made a deal that Norm would step aside so long as Jim agreed to step aside in the future if they were ever interested in running for the same position again.
Jim hoped to become Governor of Utah. In the 1980s, after Jim had been serving in the House of Representatives for a few years, there was an opening for a Republican to take back the governorship, and everyone expected Jim to make a play for it, except that Norm wanted to run. So what did Jim do? Well, he stepped aside and allowed his friend to run for and to eventually win that position--a position that Norm Bangerter then held for 8 years. That was the caliber of Jim Hansen's character. He was a man of humility and integrity, who honored his word and always put others before himself.
I would be remiss if I didn't also mention Jim's piety in the truest, purest sense of that word. In addition to having a deep loyalty to his country and to his State, he had a deep loyalty to his family and his church. Jim married Ann Burgoyne in 1958, which he considered wisely to be the smartest choice he ever made. Their family grew to include 5 children and eventually 14 grandchildren and 1 great-grandchild.
Grandpa Jim was the center of their family, and his love for them animated so much of his life. His grandchildren fondly remember his jokes, stories, and genuine, unmistakable zest for life. His granddaughter Anna recounted that on Jim's 80th birthday, when he insisted on going water-skiing, he had waded into the lake while wearing his slacks and socks, with his grandchildren sloshing behind him, to fish out the ChapStick tubes and Tic Tac packs that were floating out of his pockets. That, of course, was Jim Hansen--full of life and spirit until the very end.
Before his involvement in politics and after he served in the Navy during the Korean war, Jim went on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for 2 years. He also served as the bishop of the Farmington 2nd Ward and as the president of the Davis Stake. One of his jobs as bishop was to supervise the Farmington South Stake Center, which is where loved ones and dignitaries gathered to honor his life just this past week.
It is only fitting that we pay tribute to this honorable man, who so faithfully and nobly served God, family, and country throughout his entire life. Jim Hansen will be sorely missed by his family, friends, Utahns, and all those whose lives were touched and changed for the better by him. I have no doubt that his legacy will live on for many years to come. War Powers Resolution to End Unauthorized U.S. Military Involvement in Yemen
Mr. President, the U.S. Constitution makes unmistakably clear the fact that in order to declare war, one must go through Congress. There are good reasons for this requirement. Whenever we go to war, we are making the greatest of moral decisions--decisions that will imperil the lives of those involved in that war, including and especially the brave young men and women who represent us in uniform and who fight to protect our freedom. The costs of war--and I speak not only of the economic costs but especially of the deep human costs associated with war--are such that these decisions should never be made lightly. It is for this reason that the Founding Fathers wisely put this power into the hands of those occupying the branch of government most accountable to the people at the most regular intervals.
You cannot declare war without going through Congress. Sadly, over time, some of this power has been neglected--neglected by the very Congress to which the power properly constitutionally belongs. Under the Constitution to which every Member of this body has sworn an oath to uphold, to protect, and defend, it is wrong to go into war without Congress's directing it, ordering it, declaring it. Yet, sadly, tragically, unconstitutionally, I believe, the United States has been involved as a co-belligerent in a civil war half a world away in Yemen, involved in connection with a Kingdom of Saudi Arabia-led coalition against the Houthi rebels.
What, one might ask, is the interest of the United States in this war? What is it about this particular civil war in Yemen that is important to keep the American people safe? That is a question that has never been fully answered. In fact, it is a question that has never been answered by the only branch of government that is capable constitutionally of making that assessment, of answering that question. We have never answered it.
It is not just a mere formality that we go through when we require Congress to declare war. It is about the debate that that starts, the conversation that occurs among the American people, the accountability that each Member of the Senate and each Member of the House of Representatives has to his or her constituents. It is about the fact that we have to be able and willing to look the American people in the eye--even our own constituents, our own friends and neighbors, even and especially those who are the parents and loved ones of the men and women who will be at the battlefront and will be asked, potentially, to pay the ultimate price for defending freedom. We have to be willing to do that. Yet we haven't because, for the last 4 years, we have been fighting someone else's war without a declaration of war by Congress, without an authorization for the use of military force by Congress.
What, then, is the remedy? There are a number of things that we could do and that we should do. Among them are the procedures outlined by and provided in the War Powers Act. The War Powers Act gives us the ability to halt our military involvement where Congress deems it inappropriate.
A few months ago, Senator Sanders and I ran a resolution to do precisely that--availing ourselves of the benefits of the War Powers Act. Sadly, that measure was narrowly defeated; it was tabled; it was halted from moving forward. It has been filed again. We are going to have an opportunity again very soon, perhaps as early as tomorrow, to vote on that yet again.
In the meantime, what has changed? We have continued to fight this war still in an unconstitutional posture, still without the American people having been adequately consulted, still without the American people's elected Senators and Representatives having made a decision to go to war, still without the opportunity for us to look in the eye our neighbors, our constituents, and the parents and family members and loved ones of our brave men and women in uniform who are asked to fight these battles and to tell them why it is that we are asking for this potential sacrifice of American blood and treasure. We have not done those things.
Since that time, we have seen some very unsettling realities unfold within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with credible intelligence regarding the Crown Prince's involvement in and ordering of the death of Mr. Khashoggi. We now have not only the eyes of the American people on Saudi Arabia--more importantly, we have the eyes of people all around the world on the United States of America. It is not just about the death of Mr. Khashoggi, but Mr. Khashoggi's death and the way it came about and the way it is alleged and supposed to have been ordered by the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia says something about us if we proceed undeterred in our fighting of an unconstitutional war on behalf of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It is not just what the American people think about Saudi Arabia or about us in Washington; it is also about what the rest of the world will think about the United States of America if we turn a blind eye to this and if we continue to fight an undeclared, unauthorized, unconstitutional war that has no apparent connection to the safety of the American people, to the security of the American homeland.
This is why I respectfully--and with all of the urgency I am capable of communicating--implore my colleagues to support this resolution, to support the resolution to get us out of fighting Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen. It is not our war, not our security, not on our watch.
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