Congress and U.S. Foreign Policy  saved from http://www.trilateral.org/annmtgs/trialog/trlgtxts/t53/ham.htm
Lee H. Hamilton
The following text is an edited transcript of remarks made by Lee H. Hamilton to the 1999 annual meeting of the Trilateral Commission in Washington, D.C. (taken from a speech delivered in November 1998 at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.). Lee H. Hamilton is the Director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a former Member of the United States House of Representatives.

I want to share with you a few thoughts about the Congress and American foreign policy. I should begin, of course, with my own bias. I believe that the Congress should have and does have a constitutional responsibility to play a central role in the formulation and development, but not the implementation, of American foreign policy. I believe that a partnership between the President and the Congress that is characterized by a creative tension produces a foreign policy that better reflects the American national interests and the values of the American people. I do not favor unrestricted foreign policy powers in a President. Senator Fulbright said some years ago that such powers were neither necessery nor tolerable in a free society. I have heard too often Presidents make the argument, “Give me unchecked power to make and conduct American foreign policy.” Or, in other words, “Trust me.” I reject that approach.

Now, this view of mine that the Congress and the President have a shared responsibility in the formulation of policy requires that the Congress is able to act competently and effectively. I must say that the Congress’ performance over a period of some years gives me pause on that point. It is obvious to all of us that the international agenda is so formidable today that it requires the sustained involvement and the best thinking of people in the executive and the legislative branches.

I find Congress often acting erratically in foreign policy. It is often engaged primarily for political reasons, displaying little sophistication about very complex and difficult problems.

Sometimes Congress Goes Too Far, Sometimes Not Far Enough
Sometimes I think the Congress goes too far, acting unilaterally; sometimes I think it doesn’t go far enough. Let me begin with those instances when I think the Congress goes too far.

Congress goes too far in its unilateral approach to U.S. foreign policy. There are a number of examples. I’ll not go into a lot of detail on these examples because this is a very sophisticated audience. The HelmsBurton law, with its extraterritorial sanctions, punishes business entities in other countries that are daring to differ with American foreign policy. That law has created huge problems with our friends and our allies and has not accomplished, as far as I can see, very much. We recently celebrated the entry of three more countries into NATO. If you look back on that, Congress insisted that only these three specified countries be included in this round of NATO enlargement. We are unwilling to pay our UN dues on time and in full. We dictate the reform measures that we want the Secretary-General of the United Nations to bring about; we don’t negotiate them. We delayed paying our share of the IMF quota increase for almost two years. Congress often complains about international institutions, and I think a lot of those complaints have considerable merit. But it wants to impose unilateral solutions rather than negotiate reforms.

These unilateral demands often have a high price. What an extraordinary rebuke and spectacle it is for the United States, which pays roughly 25 percent of the UN bill, to be excluded from the UN’s key budget committee. If I understand correctly, if the United States does not pay much more of its arrearages this year, we will lose our vote in the General Assembly.

Congress does not like to be reminded that the U.S. has to work with its allies in order to carry out its policies. You can go down a long list of foreign policy problems—the Middle East, Haiti, North Korea, Bosnia, Iran, Iraq, terrorism, drugs, nuclear proliferation—and you can see that we depend heavily on allies for support to help us reach a satisfactory conclusion.

We like to call ourselves the indispensable nation. That phrase has always bothered me a great deal because there is a touch of arrogance to it and, of course, it infuriates many of our friends. But the fact is that many important goals that we have in the United States remain out of reach unless we work with friends and allies.

I think the Congress often goes too far and makes judgements that are politically driven. In the final hours of the first session of the 105th Congress, the House of Representatives passed nine anti-China bills, which expressed displeasure with China’s policies on everything from human rights to nonproliferation. There were no hearings on any of the bills. The Administration was not consulted about the impact they could have on U.S.-China relations. From my point of view at least, those bills were politically driven.

With regard to the Chemical Weapons Convention, we needed legislation to bring the United States into compliance with the convention. The Senate of the United States passed it unanimously. The House refused even to consider it. It attached the CWC implementing legislation to another bill and tried to force the President either to accept that flawed bill, or to veto the implementing legislation.

Congress, quite unwisely I think, loves linkage. Rather than considering issues on their individual merits, the Congress links them together. We link UN funding to the abortion issue. We link the Russian-Iran sanctions bill to the CWC implementing legislation. The principal issues in American foreign policy are tough enough without trying to link several of them together. When you link them to another divisive issue, you make it almost impossible to solve them.

Now, my second major concern with the Congress and the way it approaches foreign policy is that it often does not go far enough. We often exercise our constitutional obligations timidly. The clearest case of Congressional timidity in exercising its constitutional responsibility is its failure to authorize the use of force. In almost every case over the last 15 years save for the Gulf War, Congress has failed to grant prior authority, or subsequent authority, for intervention. The list is long: Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and earlier this year, Iraq. Congress has refused to take a stand. Often, it doesn’t even debate it. Instead, it leaves it to the President to make the most difficult decision that any government can make, which is whether or not to intervene militarily.

Take a look at Somalia. We had 25,000 American forces there at its peak, often engaged in combat, and the Congress never authorized or approved it. Or, take Bosnia. U.S. troops have now been deployed in Bosnia for better than three years, 20,000 men and women at the peak. Not once in that time has the Congress exercised its constitutional responsibility to authorize the deployment. The House did not authorize action in Kosovo, it merely expressed a non-binding opinion.

Congress also expresses its timidity by passing the buck. For example, Congress loves unilateral sanctions. From nuclear testing to terrorism to religious persecution, it wants to address virtually every foreign policy problem with a unilateral sanction. Unilateral sanctions allow the Congress to moralize and to posture, but they seldom have much of an impact. The President is left to make the hard decisions on the use of any waiver in the legislation and on when and whether to impose sanctions. Congress punts.

Congress also takes a stand on foreign policy issues and tries to solve them on the cheap, or we try to have it both ways. We want to be the country of leadership in the world, but we cut dramatically the 150 Budget Account, and we’ve done that over the last 10 years. We have done this to the point now that it is difficult for one embassy to communicate with another or with Washington immediately because their technology is so outdated. We favor NATO expansion, but we ultimately approved it only after the President assured us that it wouldn’t cost us much. We support the Dayton Accords, but we do not want to take the risk or pay the high cost of implementation. We complain about the refugee flows from Haiti, but we refuse to provide the resources, human or financial, to stabilize the country. This kind of posturing weakens U.S. foreign policy.

Another way in which the Congress fails to take responsibility in foreign policy is by criticizing the President’s policy without offering any alternatives. We passed a resolution last summer in the House of Representatives that detailed all of the grievances we have against Saddam Hussein. In the end, the resolution says the President should take “appropriate action.” We failed to spell out anything, not a single thing, that the President should do to deal with Iraq. So, for too many members, foreign policy has become just another battleground for political advantage over the President. They see foreign policy today as an extension of the open conflict that characterizes much of American domestic policy. They see no difference between criticizing the President’s policy on health care and education, for example, and criticizing his policy on Iraq. They do not see the Congress as a partner with the President in developing American foreign policy. They miss any sense that Congress has a responsibility under the Constitution to help make good policy. Don’t misunderstand me. The President needs criticism. I have done it myself scores of times without reference to the political party of the President, but I am troubled by the failure of the Congress to offer alternatives and to criticize constructively.

Presidents Should Consult More
Now let me mention the role of the President because I have been pretty tough on the Congress. On almost every problem I have mentioned the President must bear some of the responsibility. If a President consulted appropriately, many of the problems I have suggested could have been avoided. I have served with seven Presidents of the United States and not a single one of them has consulted enough with the Congress on important questions of American foreign policy. The result is that every President has experienced deep trouble or failure at some point from an inability to convince Congress of the merits of his policies.

I have a suggestion for dealing with this problem. In 1993, I joined several other members of the House in introducing a bill to create a standing consultative committee or group made up of key members of Congress to meet regularly, maybe once a month, with the President or his senior advisers to discuss the full range of foreign policy issues. Every single President with whom I’ve discussed that proposal likes the idea, gives me a pat on the back, nods his head affirmatively—and nothing happens. While every administration seems to like the idea, none of them has shown sufficient interest in implementing it, and I really do not know why.

A President, of course, has the responsibility to articulate policy. More than one failure in American foreign policy has occurred because the policy was neither clearly articulated nor well understood. The President has the obligation to educate the American people about the world in which we live and show them the connections between their lives and events around the world and speak with great clarity about the demands on American leadership in the world. Presidents are often unwilling to take on the burden of articulating policy and educating and guiding public opinion, but this is the essential task of leadership.

The Attitudes of the American Public
Let me say a word about the mood in the United States today. The trend in U.S. foreign policy in the post-Cold War period, as I have suggested, is away from international engagement. It is reflected in many of the things I have already mentioned—the reduction of spending on international diplomacy and foreign aid, and resistance to paying arrearages or to contribute to UN peacekeeping operations. Those of you who are in my generation grew up with the idea, at least the Americans, that the American role in the world was a given, and that America would try to shape the world of which it was a part. Many younger politicians in the Congress today across the political spectrum are more questioning of our role. They do not take a dominant role by America as a given. They have to be persuaded.

I think the public mood would tend to agree with those younger politicians more than it would with me. The public no longer supports the U.S. taking on a disproportionate share of the world’s problems and it shies away from a dominant role. At the same time, the American public is willing to take on a fair share of international responsibility. I am impressed that there continues to be a very deep moral element to public opinion. Americans really do want the United States to do the right thing. They want to be proud of our role and our national self-image.

There is a gap, however, between the dominant perceptions of public attitudes held by policy practitioners, especially members of Congress, and the attitudes held by the American people. Surveys indicate, over and over again, that Americans are not isolationists, anti-UN, anti-UN peacekeeping, or anti-foreign aid. But many policymakers tend to believe that they are. What is so striking today is that a gap remains between the policymakers’ perceptions and public opinion on the breadth of support for international engagement. Reducing this gap is a prerequisite for a successful policy and for giving policymakers more confidence by ensuring that there is public support for American international engagement.

I conclude with this: The Congress, at its best, has a lot to contribute to foreign policy. The President is isolated in our system of government. Unlike the British Prime Minister, he rarely faces his critics face to face. George Reedy, a former press secretary of one of our Presidents once said, “No one ever tells the President to go soak his head.” I have seen this phenomenon of deference to the President a hundred times or more and, in my view, it is usually unhealthy. Members of Congress can offer the President unfiltered, independent advice. He can not get that from his own appointees. He may not always take the advice of Congress, but that advice is invaluable to him. When the President does take it into consideration, I think a better policy emerges.

In short, Congress needs to step up to its constitutional obligations and take a full share of reponsibility for the formulation of American foreign policy. Our policy works best when the President and the Congress both measure up to their constitutional responsibilities and work together.

Speech by The Honorable Lee H. Hamilton

Center for Strategic and International Studies
November 19, 1998
Save from: http://www.csis.org/html/sp98hamilton.html

I speak tonight about the role of the Congress in American foreign policy.

To begin, let me state my own bias: I believe that the Congress should have — and constitutionally does have — a central role to play in the formulation and development of American foreign policy.

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. The President is Commander-in-Chief and has the exclusive power to conduct diplomacy.

I believe that a partnership, characterized by creative tension between the President and the Congress, produces a foreign policy that better serves the American national interest — and better reflects the values of the American people — than policy produced by the President alone.

I do not favor unrestricted foreign policy power for the President. It is, as Senator Fulbright said, neither necessary nor tolerable in a democratic society. On many occasions I have seen a President argue for "flexibility," when he really meant, "give me unchecked power to make and conduct foreign policy." Or, to put it another way, his basic argument to the Congress and the American people has often been, "Trust me."

This view of mine — that the President and the Congress have a shared responsibility for foreign policy — requires a Congress that is able to act on foreign policy matters with effectiveness and competence. And on these two counts, the performance of the Congress over many years gives me pause.

Today's demanding international agenda requires the sustained involvement of both the President and the Congress. But Congress does not take a balanced and constructive approach to the serious business of foreign policy. Congress involves itself erratically. It is often engaged primarily for political reasons, displaying little sophistication about complex and difficult problems. Many times, Congress has not contributed to finding solutions to the serious challenges we face. Instead, it has often made those challenges more difficult.

Sometimes, the Congress goes too far, acting unilaterally or pushing unwise initiatives. Other times, the Congress does not go far enough, failing to take responsibility for its constitutional obligations. The bottom line is, that, at an important time in American foreign policy, Congress has not strengthened the U.S. leadership role in the world.

Going Too Far

Unilateralism

Congress goes too far in its unilateral approach to U.S. foreign policy. Examples of this unilateralist tendency are many:

The Helms-Burton law. Its extraterritorial sanctions punish business entities in other countries for daring to differ with American policy toward Cuba. This law has created huge problems with our friends and allies, and has achieved nothing positive.

The Iran-Libya Sanctions Act contains similar extraterritorial sanctions. It too has prompted strong protest from friends and allies. That is its chief accomplishment.

We insisted that only three, specified countries would be on the list for this round of NATO enlargement. We are unwilling to pay our UN dues on time, and in full. We dictate on UN reform to Secretary General Kofi Annan. We delayed paying our share of the IMF quota increase. Congress complains about international institutions — and those complaints often have some merit. But Congress wants to unilaterally impose reform on international institutions, rather than negotiate reform with our fellow members.

These unilateral demands carry a high price.

Several weeks ago, we were denied a seat on the committee that oversees the UN's budget and spending practices, because we do not pay our bills. What an extraordinary rebuke and spectacle it is to see the United States, which pays 25% of the UN budget, excluded from its key budget committee.

When we act unilaterally, we damage relationships with our closest friends and allies — on whom we rely for support on other important foreign policy and trade issues — and we weaken our ability over the long run to protect and promote our interests.

The Congress does not like to be reminded that we really need allies. You can go down a long list of foreign policy problems — the Middle East peace process, Haiti, North Korea, Bosnia, Iran, Iraq — and see that, in each case, we depend heavily on allies for support to help us achieve a satisfactory outcome. We may be the indispensable nation, but many important goals of our policy will remain out of reach unless we work for, and with, the support of friends and allies. We are stronger and more effective with international consensus and support for our policies. While unilateral action by the United States sometimes may be necessary to promote our interests, Congress overdoes it. We need to advance U.S. interests without being demeaning or overbearing. Style counts, and cooperation works. At a time when U.S. leadership is challenged and greatly needed, unilateralism undermines our ability to lead.

Unwise Policies

Congress also goes too far by advocating policies that, I believe, are often politically driven, or simply unwise.

With increasing frequency, politically divisive actions in the Congress on foreign policy issues pay scant attention to the requirements of protecting and advancing U.S. national interests.

China Bashing. In the final hours of the first session of the 105th Congress, the House passed nine anti-China bills, which expressed displeasure with China's policies on everything from human rights to nonproliferation. No hearings were held on any of the bills. The Administration was not consulted about the impact the bills could have on U.S.-China relations, nor on how they fit into our overall policy. Indeed, they seemed designed mainly for political purposes.

These bills were brought forward at a delicate time in U.S.-China relations, and for a highly political reason — to embarrass the President. Only strenuous efforts by the President convinced the House to defer action on these bills until after the state visit to Washington of China's President Jiang Zemin.

KEDO funding. The Congress has resisted funding for KEDO in North Korea from the moment the Agreed Framework was approved — without offering an alternative policy for managing relations with North Korea or blocking its nuclear ambitions.

Withholding U.S. funds for KEDO is a dangerous and short-sighted way for the Congress to express its legitimate concerns about security issues on the Korean Peninsula, especially in view of the grave consequences that could follow the collapse of the Agreed Framework.

Russia-Iran sanctions bill. The Iran Missile Proliferation Sanctions Act had a worthy goal — to stop the proliferation of missile technology from Russia to Iran. But the bill contained mandatory sanctions that would have undermined — not advanced — the President's efforts to secure Russia's cooperation on nonproliferation.

CWC implementing legislation. We needed this legislation to bring the United States into compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention, to which we have been a party since Senate ratification in April 1997.

The Senate passed the implementing legislation by unanimous consent one month later, but the leadership in the House refused even to consider it. Rather, it attached the CWC implementing legislation to the Russia-Iran sanctions bill, forcing the President either to accept that flawed bill or veto the implementing legislation. When the President vetoed the legislation containing both bills, the House again held hostage the implementing legislation, which was passed in the final hours as part of the omnibus spending bill.

Linkage. Finally, Congress — quite unwisely, I think — likes linkage. Rather than considering issues on their merits, the Congress links issues together. For example, we linked UN funding to the abortion issue. We linked the Russia-Iran sanctions bill to the CWC implementing legislation.

Linkage makes the President and Members of Congress either accept policies they oppose in order to gain approval of a policy they support, or get no progress on issues they believe are important. This policy of creating linkage between difficult and unrelated issues has been raised to an art form in recent years. The principal issues in foreign policy are tough enough. When we link them to other divisive issues, we make them near impossible.

Not Going Far Enough

My second major concern with the way Congress approaches foreign policy is the flip side of the problem of going too far. Frequently, the Congress does not go far enough. We often exercise our constitutional obligations on foreign policy timidly, or not at all. When Congress opts out of making U.S. foreign policy, the risks of choosing the wrong course are greater, and the country is less united in its support of policy.

Failure to Authorize the Use of Force

The clearest case of congressional timidity in exercising its constitutional responsibility is its failure to authorize the use of force.

In almost every case over the past 15 years — save for the Gulf War — Congress has failed to grant 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 leaves it to the President to make the most difficult decision any government can make — whether to intervene with military force.

Somalia. In November 1992, shortly before he left office, President Bush sent 25,000 U.S. troops to Somalia as part of a multinational, humanitarian effort to prevent the starvation of more than 300,000 Somalis.

Congress set no terms or conditions on that deployment until U.S. Army Rangers were killed in October 1993 in the streets of Mogadishu — and then it tried to cut-off funding. Here you had a major military intervention by the United States — involving 25,000 U.S. troops at its peak, with frequent combat engagements — and Congress never authorized or approved it.

Bosnia. U.S. troops have now been deployed in Bosnia for three years — roughly 8,000 today and 20,000 at the peak. Not once in that time has the Congress exercised its constitutional responsibility to authorize this deployment. Congress has been content to sit back and let the President exercise his authority, and assume all the risks and responsibility.

Failure to Take Responsibility

Congress also displays its timidity by passing the buck.

Sanctions and waivers. With alarming frequency, Congress today turns to the use of unilateral sanctions.

Congress loves unilateral sanctions. From nuclear testing to terrorism to religious persecution, it wants to address virtually all foreign policy problems with sanctions. Unilateral sanctions allow Congress to moralize and posture, but they seldom have much of an impact. I have many problems with unilateral economic sanctions. They harm the U.S. economy and U.S. foreign policy, and they don't accomplish very much. But, so far as the Congress is concerned, sanctions are a good way to shirk responsibility for its decisions. By adopting sanctions legislation, Congress lets domestic and foreign audiences know how much we disapprove of a nation's conduct, but we let the President make the hard policy choices by including a waiver in the sanctions legislation.

The President is left to make the hard decisions on when and whether to impose sanctions. Congress punts. It gets all the credit for acting tough, and then is primed to blast the President when he exercises his waiver authority to avoid sanctions harmful to the American national interest. On sanctions, Congress postures but takes none of the real responsibility of putting forward constructive foreign policy alternatives.

Having It Both Ways. Often when the Congress does take a stand on a foreign policy issue, we try to solve difficult issues cheaply or we try to have it both ways.

The Congress wants to see U.S. leadership in the world, but — over the last 10 years — the Congress has sharply cut the international affairs budget. In doing so, we undermine the U.S. ability to conduct even the most basic functions of diplomacy. As an example, our embassies are forced to function with communications technology so outdated that most cannot communicate by e-mail with each other or with the State Department in Washington.

We favor NATO expansion, but we ultimately approved it only after the President assured us that it wouldn't cost much. We support the Dayton accords, but we do not want to take the risks or pay the high cost of implementation. We complain about refugee flows from Haiti, but we refuse to provide the resources to stabilize that country.

This kind of posturing — favoring actions, but failing to provide the resources to get the job done — weakens U.S. foreign policy. An effective foreign policy requires that resources are sufficient to achieve the objectives.

Gratuitous Criticism. Another way in which Congress fails to take responsibility in foreign policy is by criticizing the President's policies, without offering any constructive alternatives of its own. Let me mention a few examples:

The 1994 Haiti intervention. The President was subject to fierce criticism about the Haiti intervention, but critics never spelled out what we could or should have done better in Haiti.

Iraq policy. We complained about U.S. policy toward Iraq in a resolution passed this summer, and cited numerous examples of Saddam's refusal to comply with UN resolutions. Then, Congress told the President to take "appropriate action," but failed to spell out what practical steps should be taken.

The 1995 Mexico rescue package. Congress would not authorize financial assistance for Mexico, so the President, eventually, acted unilaterally to help rescue the Mexican economy. Those who criticized the President's actions never spelled out what they would have done to address the crisis.

The Middle East peace process. There is never a shortage of Members willing to criticize a President for his handling of the Middle East peace process. But few, if any, Members offer a road map of how they would move it forward.

For too many members, foreign policy has become just another battleground for political advantage over the President. These members see foreign policy as just an extension of the open conflict that characterizes American domestic politics. They see no difference between criticizing the President's policy on health care or education, and criticizing his policy on Iraq. These members do not see the Congress as a partner with the President in developing American foreign policy. They miss any sense that Congress has a responsibility to help make good policy.

A President needs criticism when his foreign policy is off track. I have done it scores of times — and without reference to political party. But I am troubled by the failure of the Congress to offer policy alternatives and to criticize constructively.

Secrecy

On the issue of who decides what is a secret, the timidity of the Congress in foreign affairs is startling. Congress has chosen to cede to the President full responsibility for determining what is secret and what is not, and what information can be used in public debate and when. By doing so, Congress yields enormous power — the power of information — to the President.

There is no statutory regime in place to give the Congress any voice in determining how much access it can have to classified information. Congress has simply never acted on this subject.

I recognize that the President should be the major voice in these critical decisions. What I cannot accept is the willingness of the Congress to cede all authority to him on this issue. This gives the President — who has access to everything — an enormous advantage in public debates on national security issues. But Congress is too timid to assert its role as a partner in the conduct of foreign policy. The net outcome is that Congress allows itself — and the American public — to be shut off from information critical to the foreign policy decision-making process and to open, democratic government.

Shared Blame

As you have noted by now, I have focused some heavy criticism on the Congress.

So perhaps I should close my remarks with a few observations on the role of the President in the making of American foreign policy. He is, after all, the chief architect of U.S. foreign policy.

The modern history of American foreign policy is a history of Presidential leadership. Presidents dominate the foreign policy process, because we have endured decades of national security crises, during which the natural tendency is to turn to the President for action, and to support him. But Presidents bear some of the responsibility for the problems I have cited, and they can certainly do more to alleviate them:

First, a President should consult. No Administration with which I have served — and my experience goes back to Lyndon Johnson, 7 Presidents in all — has consulted enough with the Congress on important questions in U.S. foreign policy. The result is that every President has experienced deep trouble or failure at some point from an inability to convince Congress of the merits of his policy.

Almost every policy problem I have mentioned could have been avoided or ameliorated if the President and his team spent more time with Congress, understanding its concerns, listening to its advice, and explaining the difficulties of the problems. Every President complains that consultation with Congress is too difficult — that there are too many Members, and too little time.

I have one suggestion for dealing with this problem. In 1993, I joined several other Members of the House in introducing a bill to create a Standing Consultative Group — made up of Members of Congress — to meet regularly and frequently with the President or his senior advisors to discuss the full range of foreign policy issues. The Group would also meet on an emergency basis, whenever the President is considering military action abroad.

A formal and regular mechanism for consultation by the President or his advisors with the Congress would go a long way to eliminate or ameliorate some of the problems I have outlined tonight. While every administration seems to like the idea, none has shown the slightest interest in implementing it. I do not know why.

Second, a President should articulate. The President must be willing to articulate his foreign policy objectives with great precision. More than one failure in American foreign policy has occurred because policy was neither clearly articulated nor well understood. The President must educate the American people about the world we live in, show them the connections between their lives and events around the world, and speak with great clarity about what American leadership in the world demands.

Presidents are often unwilling to educate and guide public opinion, but this essential task is the core of leadership. For example, you cannot expect Members of Congress — who often go for years with scarcely a word about the IMF — to suddenly walk into the House chamber and vote "aye" for a quota increase of $18 billion.

Finally, a President should build trust. U.S. leadership on foreign policy requires a working relationship between the Congress and the President based on trust and respect. Without dismissing our genuine political and ideological differences, the Congress and the President need to make a greater effort to work together, putting the U.S. national interest ahead of partisan and personal concerns. In the end, there is no substitute for extensive consultation and mutual respect.

Conclusion

Tonight I have been critical of an institution in which I have been proud to serve. I do not believe, however, that I have painted an inaccurate picture.

My concern is that Congress has yet to develop a capacity for coherent, responsible action in the conduct of the nation's foreign affairs. It has ample opportunity to assert its appropriate role in foreign policy — if it wishes to do so. Congress has — at its best — a lot to contribute to the making of foreign policy.

The President is isolated in our system of government. Unlike a British prime minister, he rarely faces his critics face-to-face. No one, as George Reedy once said, tells him "to go soak his head." I have seen this phenomenon of deference to the President a hundred times or more. In my view, that is usually unhealthy.

A principal purpose of the Congress is to give a broad, public airing of any issue. Members of Congress can offer the President unfiltered, independent advice. He cannot get that from his own appointees. He may not always take the advice of Congress, but it can be invaluable to him. When the President does take the advice of the Congress into consideration, better policy emerges and the President has more support to carry it out. So, Congress should put aside its efforts to score political points on foreign policy issues. It should aim to help the President develop strong, practical policies to solve real foreign policy problems. Congress is not just a detached critic of American foreign policy; it is a partner in its development, with an obligation to work critically, but respectfully with the President to build a consensus behind real policy options.

In short, Congress needs to step up to the plate, assert its constitutional authorities, and take a full share of responsibility for the formulation of American foreign policy. Our foreign policy works best when the President and the Congress both measure up to their constitutional responsibilities, and work together on behalf of America's interests.

Thank you.