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"Are
We Going to War?"
A
RealAudio version of this segment is available
MARGARET
WARNER: Nearly every day, Sen. Joe Biden rides the train to Washington
from his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware. And on nearly every
trip he hears the same anxious question.
OFFICER
GRIFFIN: How we making out with that war?
 SEN.
JOE BIDEN: I don't know.
OFFICER
GRIFFIN: We gonna be going over there?
SEN.
JOE BIDEN: Every single person, whether it's a businessman or
woman making $500,000 bucks a year, or it's the conductor, and
it's always in this tone. It's "Joe, are we going to war?"
MARGARET
WARNER: It pains Biden -- the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee -- to tell his constituents the decision is
out of his hands.
SEN.
JOE BIDEN: They don't realize that we, including me, gave the
president authority, and voted to give him the authority, to go
ahead from this point on in what he thinks is basically the right
way to proceed
MARGARET
WARNER: Congress gave the president that authority -- by huge
margins -- in the House and Senate last October.
So
while opposition to war is growing louder, protesters shouldn't
look to the new Congress for help says Norman Ornstein, of the
American Enterprise Institute.
NORMAN
ORNSTEIN: The House and Senate will have a lot to say about the
president's decision, but they will have nothing to do with the
president's decision to go to war. They've already made their
choice. The dye is cast.
MARGARET
WARNER: Republican Robert Bennett of Utah thinks the president
still has to be sensitive to congressional opinion.
SEN.
ROBERT BENNETT: Congress, speaking legally now, what's written
on the piece of paper has virtually given the president a blank
check and said, you do whatever you want to do. Now the practical
situation is the president, even with that authority, will not
go to war unless he has a sense that the Congress is still with
him.
MARGARET
WARNER: But Florida Sen. Bob Graham, who voted against the Iraq
resolution, disagrees.
SEN.
BOB GRAHAM: He may be the recipient of a lot of advice. But finally,
it's his decision.
MARGARET
WARNER: The same goes for the broader war on terror overseas.
President Bush is calling the shots.
 Sen.
Graham, the ranking Democrat on the intelligence committee, thinks
the president should focus more on pursuing terrorists overseas
and less on Iraq.
SEN.
BOB GRAHAM: I don't think we are pursuing the war on terrorism
sufficiently aggressively.
MARGARET
WARNER: So what can Congress do about that?
SEN
BOB GRAHAM: I think it's too late for Congress, and it's almost
too late for the administration to do anything before the war
with Iraq starts.
MARGARET
WARNER: Congress does have one bit of leverage in foreign policy
-- appropriating the money. Sen. Richard Lugar is the new chairman
of the Foreign Relations Committee.
SEN.
RICHARD LUGAR: Presidents of the United States, however, always
have realized that the power of the purse governs how far they
go and how long.
MARGARET
WARNER: But Lugar says there's no way this Congress would use
that power to try to limit the president in a time of war.
SEN.
RICHARD LUGAR: The public as a whole, when we go to war, is behind
the president. It would not tolerate Congress attempting to frustrate
the president of the United States.
MARGARET
WARNER: Nor is this post 9/11 Congress -- not even its Democrats
-- likely to curb the Pentagon's funding requests.
NORMAN
ORNSTEIN: There is almost no level of defense spending that would
be proposed by the president, that could be strenuously resisted
by Congress for fear of being labeled weak on terrorism. That's
changed the whole budget dynamic.
MARGARET
WARNER: Congress will be asked to spend even more money after
any war, to rebuild Iraq.
SEN.
RICHARD LUGAR: We are going to be involved in construction, hopefully,
of a better Iraq for the people there, as well as for the entire
neighborhood and for the world.
MARGARET
WARNER: And do you think there will be as much support in this
Congress for spending the money that that will take, as there
was for going to war?
SEN
RICHARD LUGAR: Probably not.
SEN.
BOB BENNETT: It will be a tragedy if we don't. One of the problems
with the Gulf War was that there was no proper follow-up afterwards.
MARGARET
WARNER: But Sen. Biden predicts trouble for post-war rebuilding
-- given ballooning deficits and the president's push for tax
cuts.
SEN
JOE BIDEN: I don't think most of the Congress, Republicans and
Democrats, have focused on the fact that they're going to be faced
with very hard choices. If we go in, the president next year is
going to be saying, "By the way, we need another $20 billion
dollars to keep these troops here."
 MARGARET
WARNER: Where Congress will play its biggest role in fighting
terrorism is here at home. Creating the new Department of Homeland
Security out of 22 agencies, with Tom Ridge now confirmed to head
it, was just the beginning say many lawmakers. Far more needs
to be done to make the homeland safe.
SEN.
BOB GRAHAM: America is not significantly more secure today than
it was before September the 11th, and that's my judgment. It also
is the judgment of the head of the CIA, who said in October that
we were very vulnerable, and had made little progress since September
the 11th in reducing our vulnerability.
MARGARET
WARNER: Many lawmakers have ideas to fix that -- from fortifying
the nation's power grid to creating a new domestic spy agency.
But the biggest homeland security debates this session will be
about money.
SEN.
JOE BIDEN: I think we're underfunding Homeland Security by about
$16-20 billion dollars. You know, those soccer moms are not soccer
moms anymore, they're security moms. They're home in my state
wondering, "Joe, the nuclear power plant three miles across
the river -- are you sure it's secure?"
MARGARET
WARNER: Initially Pres. Bush said the new department could be
created at no additional cost. Now that's in doubt.
NORMAN
ORNSTEIN: They can't make Homeland Security work with the budget
that they've got. The costs of reorganization, of moving, of pulling
together 24 separate payroll systems, 22 separate computer systems
are enormous. It's going to cost us billions more.
MARGARET
WARNER: Sen. Bennett concedes most members of Congress feel the
heat.
SEN
BOB BENNETT: The Congress has to recognize that we must be vigilant
on this, we must follow through on it, or indeed the Department
will lag behind and then will come the inevitable attack, and
then the finger pointing will start. Nobody wants to be at the
other end of the finger pointing.
MARGARET
WARNER: But the administration is resisting spending more on homeland
defense -- while promoting a $670 billion tax cut.
And
congressional Democrats see an opening. Earlier this month, Democratic
Sen. Robert Byrd tried to add $5 billion to the White House request
for homeland defense in this year's spending bill.
 SEN.
ROBERT BYRD: Here we are penny pinching when it comes to protecting
the homeland. We need these homeland security resources now to
meet real needs that have been authorized by the Congress for
port security, airport security, border security, nuclear security.
MARGARET
WARNER: Republican Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens
responded.
SEN.
TED STEVENS: If we didn't have the limitations we face, if we
didn't have the deficit we face, I would once again support Sen.
Byrd's funding in each of these items. Under the circumstances,
we cannot.
MARGARET
WARNER: Byrd's proposal lost on party line vote. All the Republicans
stuck with the president.
SEN.
BOB GRAHAM: Unfortunately, homeland security is not immune from
the politics that is involved in so many other things here.
MARGARET
WARNER: Finally, politics of a very local sort may get in the
way of Congress's ability to oversee the sprawling new agency.
The
dilemma -- which dozens of congressional committees, all claiming
partial jurisdiction, will have ultimate authority. Will most
of them be willing to step aside for the great goal of effective
oversight.
SEN.
BOB BENNETT: Well I've always said that hell hath no fury like
a committee chairman whose jurisdiction is being challenged.
SEN.
RICHARD LUGAR: Substantial leadership will be required by the
speaker and the majority leader and the appropriate minority officials
to do this. It will not happen by itself.
MARGARET
WARNER: For the newly sworn-in Congress, as for the nation, the
work of defending America against terrorism has just begun.
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