Yeah, please. >> Would you talk a little bit about how you leverage your relationship with Senator Kaine to collaborate on this bill? >> Senator McCain. >> Senator McCain obviously is a he cares deeply about this issue. His own military experience. Children in the military, lifelong connection with these issues. Father, Grandfather, he's got a family lineage, sort of, unique in American history, cares deeply about these issues. Now, Senator McCain and I actually, we differ significantly in some aspects of Syria, or the current discussion with Iran. So, we might resolve some of these questions differently. But he and I served together on Armed Services and Foreign Relations. There's three Senators, and only three who are on both committees, Senator McCain, me, and Jeanne Shaheen is the Senator from New Hampshire. And so we're in a lot of hearings together, you know, in both committees, and we became aware that this was troubling each of us, and so it was in about June maybe that I went to Senator McCain and said, we're 40 years into a war powers resolution that hasn't worked. And he said, it definitely hadn't worked. It definitely hasn't worked. Don't you think it's time that we make another run at it? Absolutely. So it was, he was an easy sell and I knew that because I watched and heard what he said in hearings and, and obviously and we're we, we view this as a big tough and challenging one and, and we've introduced a bill that we have confidence others will look at and think of some things we didn't think of. So somebody might think well, I'm not sure you really do address the drone issue as well as you should. They might have an improvement or a change. But he just, he cares so passionately that, that these issues should be done the right way not the wrong way. And, and again, you, you can just talk about the constitutional allocation of powers. But that, the framers allocated it that way for a reason. You know, so, let's not just talk about the language. Why did they do it? And I, I think it really comes down to this basic principle that it's just not right to ask people to fight wars for us if we haven't sat around the table and reached a consensus that this is a good thing to do. You know, what, we're going to send people to war and say, well, we can't reach a consensus? You know, Congress is so divided, we can't agree on anything. Well, so what? So it's fair to ask people to fight and risk their lives under that circumstance because we wont do the hard work of reaching a consensus? He feels about that every bit as passionately, maybe more passionately, than I do, so we, we are working on this together and we're gathering other co-sponsors and we will gather them over time. I don't know how many we'll end up gathering but I can, I can absolutely promise you this. The co-sponsor list of this thing, when we get done, it's going to be left, right, and center. It's going to be Democrat and Republican, it's going to be Senate members and House members because this has been a problem that neither party has been blameless in, that Congress and the President have both contributed to, Presidents of all parties. And I think we're going to be able to assemble a pretty good coalition. Senator, I might just add on that. One of the most striking things about both the Secretary Gates' recent memoir, which is a very striking memoir. But also Colin Powell's service is [NOISE] the feeling on some of the, part of some of the men and women in our military that civilians are making decisions. >> Yeah. >> and, and they are not being given the full support. And I've seen that on, on debates on appropriations measures, how we go. But we're talking about the Powell doctrine here. >> Sure. >> The importance if we're going to, going to commit military forces, we have our civilian leadership on record, and a consensus has been hammered out early on. Secretary Gates, of course, says that the, the folks in the Cabinet meetings often most eager to use forces are now wearing uniforms. >> Well, and look, this is a real interesting challenge in con, contemporary American life. Let's talk about those who make decisions about use of war. There used to be a draft. And so members of Congress, men, the members were overwhelmingly men during those years, a big chunk of them had served in the military. That's not the case now. In Congress, veterans might account for less than 20% in the military. Members of Congress had their own kids, if their kids were boys, who were subject to being drafted. That affected their decision making. Well, now there's three Senators that have kids in the military. Probably an equivalent tiny number in the house. 1% of American adults serve in the military. 99% of American adults don't. So the decision making is not as informed by close personal experience, either in terms or service, or my own kid might be in this battle in a way that used to happened. Here's another one. Until Iraq or Afghanistan, when this country waged war, we paid for it while we were waging it. Even Vietnam, as unpopular as it was, we taxed ourselves for war costs, not all war costs, we did a little bit of deficit spending, but we taxed ourselves for war costs during Vietnam. Iraq and Afghanistan are the first two wars in the history of the country where Congress and the President decided, you know, we can just put this on a credit card. If you didn't serve, if your own kids are in no danger of serving. If you don't have to pay for it. If you can let a President make a decision and not go on the board to vote for it. One way or the other. If you can hire Blackwater, or some private contractor as a mer, as mercenaries to do some of the work. Like, where's the accountability? Where's the accountability? And that, that means that the decision making around the initiation of military action is fundamentally different than it was even 25 years ago. We should make this a momentous and difficult decision because the consequences are momentous and the consequences will be difficult. And if that's the case and then we agree, this is something we need to do, then the American, when Congress and the President agree after a debate, the chances that the American public is going to be supportive, they're very high. If the American public is supportive, the chances that we'll stand in there and, and, and by god, we'll pay for the VA bill for these folks for the next 50 or 60 years of their life. Because we got on board and said we wanted to do this, the chances that we'll honor our commitments is higher if we do the work up front to reach a consensus. So that is a, the nature of the, it's not just the nature of technology that's changed, it's the connection that policy makers have to the realities of war that, that have changed, that is changed very dramatically in the last generation. >> Just now you just mentioned like the changing nature of war. Personally, even Senator McCain, in an article I read the other day, noted that the nature of war is changing which is why this bill is so important. I just wanted to ask you how feel your bill addresses this changing nature of war especially with the role of technology aside from the definition of war given in like the first section. >> yeah. It, it, it. Well I, I hope we address the, the nature of it. And so the Miller Center study was done in sort of you know 07, so now it's 6, 7 years old. And there have been changes since then. At least the, the study was done into the, on Iraq and Afghan war, into a war against Al Qaeda, a non-state actor that was in multiple places. So, the, the panel that did the Millerson work and I know many of you have read, a, a superb panel was chaired by two former Secretaries of State, Warren Christopher and Jim Baker. It had the members of, former members of the legislature. Democratic Congressman Lee Hamilton, Republican Senator, Slade Gorton. We had a White House Democratic, White House council Hadd Mickvin, Republican Attorney General Ed Meese. Had diplomats, had academics. Doris Kearns Goodwin was the historian to the effort to talk about the way Presidents and Congress will grapple with it. So, there's a lot of people that they had around the table who were superb in and had deep histories in understanding these questions. However, the world has changed even since 2007. So, what we did, when Senator McCain and I started this effort, is we reconvened some of the members of the panel and said, knowing everything you now know, would you change the framework? Or is something that you didn't put in that you would put in now? And they basically decided, you know what, no, we think the framework is a pretty good one. Let me tell you something that's kind of shocking. You know the Affordable Care Act. People say it's eight feet tall. It's 2,000 pages. This proposed piece of legislation, some of you have read it, it's four and a half pages long. It's, it's. This is a fairly straightforward. Simple would be the wrong word. But straightforward piece of procedural legislation. And we went back and talked to not only the Miller Center Commission members, kind of reconvened some of them, but we talked to some others and said do you see obvious oh, you've gotta add this in now. And we couldn't find any obvious gaps. But Senator McCain was also wise enough. I kept wanting to like, well let's work on it some more because there's gotta be some things that we need to improve. And he said, Tim. Let's let others help us improve it. We, we, if we worked for a year we wouldn't answer every question. Let's put it out there. Let's introduce the bill. And then others will look at it and they'll tell us thing that we missed. And we have a truly deliberative process of making amendments and, you're right, you got a good idea, we should add it, then we can make it better. And that is, ultimately, the nature of most legislation. You can do your very best work. As soon as you put it out in the public domain, somebody's going to think of something you didn't. So we decided we think it addresses the major issues that need to be addressed, even current to 2014. But we're sure we're missing something. Let's let others tell us what we're missing by putting it out there, introducing it, and then starting the process.
