Thomas Jefferson Quotes

The power to make war is vested in Congress and not in the President. Congress has no constitutional authority to grant such authority to the president.

The Congress decides when to make war and the President decides how to make war.

Every American war has brought a struggle between Congress and the Executive over war powers. The Constitution is somewhat annoyingly ambiguous on the point declaring that the President is Commander in Chief but empowering Congress to provide for the common defense, declare war, and raise and support armies.

The respective powers of the President and Congress of the United States, in the case of war with foreign powers are yet undetermined. Perhaps they can never be defined.

Without the authority of Congress, the President cannot fire a hostile gun in any case except to repel the attacks of the enemy.

This talk of blindly following the President in everything pertaining to war—except as to his conduct of military operation in the field—is blithering idiocy.... The Constitution still abides. It defines the powers and duties of Congress. It gave Congress every war power, except that it left with the President the right to direct all military operation in the field. It gave him no other war power.

I think this sets a very bad precedent, the president unilaterally on his own starting war without any consent from Congress

The authority to declare war rests in Congress, not in an out-of-control president.

Under our Constitution the Congress alone has the power to declare war.

Federal bureaucracies are creatures of Congress, not the executive.

The way I read the Constitution,. the Congress is paid a salary to determine whether we should go to war ... Therefore, I don't think Congress is earning its money.

Those who are to conduct a war cannot in the nature of things, be proper and safe judges of whether a war ought to be commenced, continued or concluded.

In no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war and peace to the legislature.... [War is] the true nurse of executive aggrandizement.

Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion … and you allow him to make war at pleasure. … If today he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may see no probability he would say to you, “Be silent!, I see if you don’t.”

It is up to Congress to see to it that its powers do not slip through its fingers

Congress no longer declares war or makes budgets. So that's the end of the constitution as a working machine.

Under our constitutional system, the executive executes the laws that Congress has passed. It should not be executing laws that Congress has rejected.

The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.

The Constitution's pretty clear. The Federalist papers are pretty clear... They very specifically delegated the power to declare war to Congress. They wanted this to be a congressional decision; they did not want war to be engaged in by the executive without approval of Congress.

The President has the power to wage war but not against U. S. laws…. He is a President; not a king.

Why are American boys dying in a war the President refuses to call a war, yet commits our forces to it?

Congressional power has not so much been usurped by the Presidency as given up to the Presidency by Congress.

Congress ... is far more than the simple, limited advisory council that most Presidents would like to maintain.

[Congress is] the chief aggrandizer of the Executive.

The President ... should be merely the executor of a power of decision that rests elsewhere; that is, in the Congress.