The Next Steps Towards Health Care Reform

July 28, 2017

Last night was a setback for health care reform. There is no way around that.
But it may also be a blessing in disguise.

The bill we were voting on, what many in the media were referring to as a “skinny” repeal bill, was truly an anemic effort. While it did repeal the individual mandate permanently, it provided only temporary relief from the employer mandate and medical device tax. It also left the rest of the Affordable Care Act’s regulations, taxes, and subsidies completely intact. By some estimates it repealed just two percent of Obamacare.

Even worse then the product we were voting on was the process that led to last night’s vote.

The bill we voted on around 1:30 this morning was only released about three hours before. It was only a handful of pages, so there was time to read it (for a change). But there was no serious debate or deliberation about its contents. Amendments could be offered, but without reports from the Congressional Budget Office about their impact on the economy and the federal budget, they required 60 votes for passage.

The bill was written in secret, with no input from either the formal congressional committees charged with oversight of our health care system, or the informal working group assigned by our leadership to craft the legislation.

My preferred amendment sat at CBO for four weeks without being given a “score” detailing its projected costs and benefits. My colleague Ron Johnson (R-WI) waited four months for a CBO report on various Obamacare provisions, without any response.

This is not the way the Senate is supposed to work. It is not the way a free people is supposed to govern itself.

When the bill failed, many declared the issue dead. But as long as Obamacare is on the books, hurting millions of Americans and driving up the cost of healthcare, this issue isn’t going anywhere.

We must now go back to the drawing board. We must to go back to the proper committees of jurisdiction and start from the beginning by identifying the specific policy problems we are trying to solve and then craft reforms to solve them.

The United States is a large, vibrant, and diverse country. There is no reason to assume the health care policies that work in a state with the demographics of Florida will also work in a state like Utah.

What we need to identify is a politically palatable way to give states the freedom needed to craft their own health care solutions. At the heart of this effort must be true freedom from the federal regulations that are the main drivers of our nation’s rising health care costs.

Saving Communities with Federalism

July 14, 2017

How strong are America’s communities? Sadly, we know from decades of research, including work by the Social Capital Project, that they are growing weaker.

Men and women are having fewer children in total, and they are also having fewer children within wedlock. Between 1970 and 2015, births to single mothers rose from 11 percent of all births to 40 percent.

Americans are spending less time in religious communities. Church attendance and trust in organized religion have dropped sharply since the early 1970s.

Americans also participate less in secular voluntary associations such as the Boy Scouts and Rotary International—groups that historically have brought together people from different walks of life.

The destruction of community life is a spiritual crisis for millions. They have been severed from local institutions that give meaning to the soul.

What caused this? There are of course many culprits, but much of the blame goes to the federal government, which has intruded into aspects of life that used to be the sole domain of civil society.

As scholar Robert Nisbet observed, government crowds out civic groups by competing with them to perform similar social functions. Robbed of purpose by a competitor they cannot outspend, these civic groups wither, leaving behind an empty public square.

The challenge we face today is rebuilding our communities, which will require us to reverse century-old trends toward centralization. We need to stop investing in Washington, and reinvest in the places we came from.

Unlike our current season of national outrage, a turn toward localism stands a chance of actually yielding a happier, healthier republic.

First of all, a renewed focus on local governance would lower the stakes of political conflict.

Given the shared values within most communities, decisions made at lower levels of government are more likely to be consensus decisions. And when problems arise within communities, local politicians are better situated to hear stakeholders’ concerns.

A renewed focus on local governance would also encourage innovation in public policy. States are referred to as the “laboratories of democracy,” but often they are not free to experiment because the federal government imposes one “solution” from above.

Instead of laboratories, the states are treated as lab rats.

This is a risky way to make policy. Top-down solutions are an all-or-nothing bet, with catastrophic in the case of failure.

Federalism offers a better way here as well. It allows states to tailor policies to their diverse cultures.

But there is one more reason we need a renewed commitment to local governance. It has to do with something at the core of our national project: Self-government.

The populist movements that are marching on Washington are motivated, in part, by a sense that they are being disregarded by their leaders.

This loss of control and respect is an indignity—a reversal of the American social compact, which puts the people in charge. And it began with the decline of self-governing local communities that give meaningful roles to ordinary people.

As usual, Tocqueville put it best. He wrote that “the township, at the center of the ordinary relations of life, serves as a field for the desire of public esteem.”

He understood that men and women desire esteem, and that for the vast majority of people esteem is earned close to home through service to others.

That is the true beauty of localism. Hundreds of years after the Founding, it still offers our country the best way forward.

A Message from Senator Lee: The Missing Ingredient in the BRCA: Humility

June 23, 2017

No, the Senate healthcare bill released yesterday does not repeal Obamacare. It doesn’t even significantly reform American healthcare.

It cuts taxes. It bails out insurance companies. It props up Obamacare through the next election. It lays out plans to slow Medicaid spending beginning in 2025, but that probably won’t happen. And it leaves in place the ham-fisted federal regulations that have driven up family health insurance premiums by 140 percent since Obamacare was implemented.

As the bill is currently drafted, I won’t vote for it.

On the other hand, I understand the opportunity Republicans have right now to help Americans get better, more affordable coverage.

That’s why I joined the Senate working group on healthcare reform with an open mind. I knew then, as I know now, that as one of the most conservative Republican Senators, I would have to compromise with the least conservative Republican Senators to get something done. And compromise I have!

At the beginning of this process, I wanted a full repeal of Obamacare. Despite campaigning on that very thing for eight years, my Republican colleagues disagreed.

So then I called for a partial repeal, like we passed in 2015 – and which conservatives were promised by our leaders in January. A partial repeal would at least force Congress to start over on a new system that could work better.

Again, no.

So then I advocated repealing Obamacare’s regulations, which have been the primary drivers of spiking premiums. I repeated this suggestion at every single meeting of the working group, and at every members lunch for several weeks. Yet when the Better Care Reconciliation Act was unveiled yesterday, the core Obamacare regulations were largely untouched.

Far short of “repeal,” the Senate bill keeps the Democrats’ broken system intact, just with less spending on the poor to pay for corporate bailouts and tax cuts. A cynic might say that the BCRA is less a Republican health care bill than a caricature of a Republican health care bill.

Yet, for all that, I have not closed the door on voting for some version of it in the end.

Conservatives have compromised on not repealing, on spending levels, tax credits, subsidies, corporate bailouts, Medicaid, and the Obamacare regulations. That is, on every substantive question in the bill.

Having conceded to my moderate colleagues on all of the above, I now ask only that the bill be amended to include an opt-out provision, for states or even just for individuals.

The reason Americans are divided about health care (like so many issues today) is that we don’t know exactly how to fix it. Politicians hate to admit it, and partisans like to pretend otherwise. But it’s true.

And history teaches us that when we don’t know how to solve a problem, the best thing to do is to experiment. We should test different ideas through a cooperative, bottom-up, trial-and-error process rather than imposing top-down, partisan power-plays that disrupt the lives of hundreds of millions of people at a time.

Eight years ago Democrats created a one-size-fits-all national health care system… and it’s collapsing around us. They couldn’t even make the darn website work!

Why do Republicans – who are supposedly skeptical of government miracle-working – expect our one-size-fits-all scheme to work any better?

The only hope for actually solving the deep, challenging problems in our health care system is to let people try out approaches other than the ones a few dozen politicians thought up inside the D.C. bubble.

And so, for all my frustrations about the process and my disagreements with the substance of BCRA, I would still be willing to vote for it if it allowed states and/or individuals to opt-out of the Obamacare system free-and-clear to experiment with different forms of insurance, benefits packages, and care provision options. Liberal states might try single-payer systems, while conservatives might emphasize health savings accounts. Some people embrace association health plans or so-called “medishare” ministry models. My guess is different approaches will work for different people in different places – like everything else in life.

The only way to find out what does work is to find out what doesn’t. We know the pre-Obamacare system was breaking down. Now we know Obamacare is failing too. I doubt the BCRA system would fare much better, or that the next Pelosi-Sanders-Warren scheme Democrats cook up wouldn’t be even worse.

At some point Washington elites might at least entertain the possibility that we may not have all the answers. I think right now – with President Trump’s shocking upset of the establishment still fresh in our minds - would be a good time for Congress to add a new ingredient to its legislative sausage: a dash of humility.

To win my vote, the Republican health care bill must create a little space for states and individuals to sidestep Washington’s arrogant incompetence, and see if they can do better.

Recent history suggests they couldn’t possibly do worse.

Reforming Welfare to Protect Work and Marriage

June 16, 2017

There is much to celebrate in America today. Americans are, on average, wealthier, healthier, and better-educated than we ever have been. We've made huge strides in civil rights and racial equality. And we have access to technology that would have awed past generations.

But fundamentally, our culture and way of life has undergone some changes that are not necessarily positive.

As documented in the recently released report, "What We Do Together: The State of Associational Life in America," Americans' day-to-day lives have significantly changed over the last few decades -- and not always for the better.

Between 1970 and 2016, the share of children not being raised by two parents rose from 15 to 31 percent. Over that same time, births to single mothers rose from 11 percent to 40 percent. And more than half of American children now live with a single parent at some point before they turn 16.

This breakdown of the American family has real economic and social consequences for all of us. On average, children from married households live healthier lives, attain higher levels of education, earn more, and enjoy greater wealth as adults than children from single-parent households.

As the American family has been weakening, our attachment to work has been fraying for many as well. Between 1970 and 2016, labor force participation for prime-working-age men declined from 96 percent to 89 percent. The fall-off has been worse for men with little education, who now put in 14 percent fewer hours at work in 2012 than they did in the mid-1970s.

There is no silver-bullet solution to these problems. The causes are cultural, economic, and policy related. What we do know is that at a bare minimum government should not be actively making these problems worse.

Unfortunately, some of our current welfare policies are doing just that, which is why I introduced the Welfare Reform and Upward Mobility Act last month.

Prior to the Obama administration, the size of the federal government's food stamp program ebbed and flowed with the economy. The number of recipients went up during recessions and fell during recoveries.

But President Obama ended the link between work and food stamp eligibility. As a result, today's food stamp program foots the bill for 44 million people, compared to just 26 million before the recession.

Welfare Reform and Upward Mobility Act would restore that link between work and assistance by creating a 100-hour-per-month work requirement for able-bodied adults without dependents. Single parents with a child younger than 6 would be exempt from penalties, but they would still be guaranteed access to all vocational opportunities offered by the state.

Finally, to make sure that current food stamp recipients are assisted in their search for work, states would also be given $500 million to help develop vocational programs for those who have trouble finding work. The era of signing citizens up for assistance and then neglecting the next step must end.

The bill would also allow married parents with children to split the work requirement between them, thus making it easier for married parents to balance work and family.

These are admittedly small steps. Much more can be done to end the many ways federal policies currently punish work and marriage through the tax code, health policy, and housing assistance. But we can start by removing some of the barriers that make family and work life more difficult. And our bill, the "Welfare Reform and Upward Mobility Act," would start making that happen.

Provo Before Paris

June 9, 2017

Last Thursday, President Trump announced the federal government would pull out of the supposedly “non-binding” Paris Climate Accord signed by President Obama.

This should not have been a surprise.

Earlier this March, President Trump signed an order rescinding President Obama’s so-called “Clean Power Plan,” a 1,560-page regulation that would have rewritten America’s federal energy policy. This massive new regulatory burden — never approved by Congress — was the cornerstone of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan. Meeting the emissions reduction targets President Obama agreed to in Paris would have been impossible without it.

So as soon as President Trump killed the Clean Power Plan back in March, he also functionally killed the Paris Accord. Both actions are fantastic news for the American people.

President Obama’s Clean Power Plan would have closed hundreds of coal-fired power plants and frozen construction of new plants. Since coal provides approximately 40 percent of America’s electricity, and 75 percent of Utah’s, these new regulations would have raised electricity costs, sending shockwaves through the U.S. economy. NERA Economic Consulting estimated that the Clean Power Plan would have cost the U.S. economy over $40 billion annually.

And for what? Even if the Clean Power Plan had been implemented to perfection, climate activists admit it would have lowered global temperatures by just .02 degrees Celsius over the span of one hundred years.

This is exactly why President Obama’s push for a carbon regulation scheme failed in Congress in 2010. Faced with an honest debate the American people wisely chose not to gamble with their household budgets for speculative environmental benefits.

After losing fair and square, President Obama abandoned the democratic process and pursued his climate priorities through executive fiat. He twisted the Clean Air Act to enact policies the law was never intended to allow. Then he ran to the international community seeking a blessing of legitimacy that the American people never gave him.

President Obama never submitted his Paris Accord to the United States Senate as the Constitution requires for treaties. Instead he hoped that future presidents would bow to foreign pressure and go along with an international regulatory regime the American people never approved.

The 2016 election was about many things, perhaps none greater than the growing sense among Americans that our political elites were working for themselves and their foreign counterparts instead of for the American people. For all of Donald Trump’s flaws as a candidate, the American people elected him to, as he said, “put America first” again. The American people care — deeply — about our environment, and they are perfectly capable of protecting it, both privately and when necessary through government policy. But those decisions are not for a single politician, and certainly not a committee of foreign dignitaries we never elected, to make.

Agree with his decision or not, President Trump stood up last Thursday for the Constitution and the citizens it protects. And we are all better off that he did.

Make the Internet Open Again

May 26, 2017

Anyone who has followed the hyperbolic debate about net neutrality has likely heard that the FCC is moving to “squelch competition,” “limit consumer choice,” “raise prices,” and perhaps even “destroy the Internet.” At least, that is what some activists and crusading late-night comedians claim.

But none of this is true. Rather, what the FCC did do last week was vote to reconsider the agencies barely two-year old decision to begin regulating the Internet, for the first time ever, under Title II of the 1934 Communications Act.

Why did the FCC begin to regulate the Internet through a law designed to govern rotary telephones?

It wasn’t because the existing free and open Internet was harming Americans. The activists and entertainers clamoring for more government claimed it was under attack by predatory Internet Service Providers. But strangely enough, none of them could actually provide any evidence for that serious assertion. Instead, they speak about imaginary or hypothetical harms. The 400-page rule uses words like “may,” “could,” “might,” or “potentially” several hundred times.

Nor did the FCC issue its 2015 regulation because Congress told it to. On the contrary, after passing the bipartisan Telecommunications Act of 1996, a group of bipartisan senators affirmed the Internet’s status as a free and open information service, stating that “nothing in the 1996 Act or its legislative history suggests that Congress intended to alter the current classification of Internet and other information services or to expand traditional telephone regulation to new and advanced services.”

What the Internet does need is regulatory certainty, which is why I recently introduced the Restoring Internet Freedom Act with several of my colleagues. This bill would fully repeal the FCC’s 2015 Internet takeover. More importantly, it would prevent the FCC from interfering with the Internet in the future unless specifically authorized by Congress.

But we shouldn’t stop there. Instead of waiting for regulators and activists to find new excuses to restrict the Internet, we should open it further to extend more choices to American consumers.

Thankfully, my colleagues in the Senate have already identified many of the regulatory barriers preventing more providers from entering the market. Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Steve Daines (R-MT) have spent considerable time on policies to streamline broadband Internet deployment through their “Dig Once” proposals. Sen. Heller (R-NV) is a champion for reducing barriers to deploying broadband throughout the West. Sens. John Thune (R-SD) and Bill Nelson (D-FL), the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee, have introduced measures to free up radio spectrum held by federal agencies and organizations. These are just a few of the many thoughtful ideas to reduce barriers to entry.

For the sake of American consumers and innovators—not for entrenched business interests—I hope to work with partners in the House, Senate, and FCC to promote competition in the technology sector, including among Internet Service Providers.

If that means underperforming companies have to work a little harder for their customers, all the better. Because the end result of lively competition is more investment and innovation by businesses, which translates into more choices and better service for consumers.

What We Do Together

May 19, 2017

Our nation, today, faces very real economic challenges. Economic growth during the recovery has been meager and uneven. The U.S. economy has become less dynamic and innovative in recent decades. We miss the strong productivity growth America enjoyed in the mid-twentieth century and the unusually large wage gains it brought.

However, in historical and comparative perspective, most Americans enjoy unprecedented material living standards. Our economic problems often take the form of unsatisfactory rates of improvement; we are growing richer less quickly than we did when we were poorer.

Nevertheless, many Americans—poor, middle class, and wealthy—feel that something is amiss. It is a feeling that cannot be reduced to economic anxiety. Rather, there is a sense that our social fabric is fraying.

And these concerns are reflected in objective measures of family and community health. To cite just a few of the trends that may be grouped under the rubric of “social capital”: marriage and churchgoing have declined; distrust of the nation’s institutions has grown; mixed-income neighborhoods have become rarer; regional polarization has increased; and young men who are neither working nor looking for work have become more numerous and more isolated. We do less together than in the past, and we are worse off for it, economically and otherwise.

To better document and explore these issues I released a report Monday titled, “What We Do Together,” which was then the topic of a Joint Economic Committee hearing Wednesday. This report and hearing are just the beginning of a multi-year research effort we are calling the Social Capital Project.

An emphasis on social capital complements the economic lens through which we typically view national challenges today. Many of our ostensibly economic problems reflect the withering of our associational life. For example, the fragility of so many families today reduces upward mobility. And diminishing trust has implications for the decline in business dynamism, since risk-taking requires confidence in each other and our institutions.

Economic trends, in turn, affect the extent to which we cooperate to achieve our desired ends. Our first report, “What We Do Together,” concludes that rising affluence has reduced the economic necessity of having close ties with neighbors and traditional institutions. It also highlights the extent to which the growth in two-worker families has affected investment in social capital. These economic changes have conferred valuable benefits, but by depleting social capital, they have also come with costs.

This first report does not identify a legislative agenda to address these problems, but Dr. Robert Putnam, author of “Bowling Alone,” suggested a possible direction to look at the close of Wednesday’s hearing.

“I do think that this problem, if it is 2020 and we have turned this around, the first signs will be at the state and local level around America. That’s where America in the past has fixed its problems… Now will all the problems be completely solved at the local level? Absolutely not… But I am saying that is where I would look for opportunities for making real progress.”

As our Social Capital Project continues I will work to ensure that the federal government is breaking down, rather than building up, barriers that prevent our local communities from tackling these problems head on.

An Obamacare Repeal Update

May 12, 2017

This week a working group of United States senators began meeting on a bi-weekly basis to reach a consensus on how to repeal and replace Obamacare. We are still very early in the process but it is clear already that there is much work to be done before we can find the votes needed to reform our failing health care system.

The first topic the group focused on was rolling back Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, a program that has given insurance cards to 11 million able bodied adults without kids at a cost of $64 billion a year without improving their actual health care outcomes.

Conservatives in the room have three big priorities when it comes to Medicaid reform: 1) ending the enhanced federal spending on Medicaid expansion recipients; 2) setting an inflation rate for the per capita allotment that is fiscally responsible; and 3) increasing the flexibility of states to best provide quality health care for the low-income and vulnerable populations in their state.

Unfortunately, the House health care bill concedes that states will continue to receive federal Medicaid dollars for the new expansion population. This categorical expansion is already a huge concession and should, at the very least, be part of a program reform that grows at a low rate closely resembling historical growth. That is why many of my colleagues and I want to put the reformed per capita allotment Medicaid program on a sustainable fiscal path with a growth rate of CPI-U.
Hopefully we will be able to also include additional flexibility for states to innovate and adopt new mechanisms that serve the unique needs of each state’s vulnerable populations.

The health care working group also addressed the individual insurance market, where conservatives pushed to repeal as many of Obamacare’s insurance regulations as possible.

The Obamacare regulations drive up the cost of health care the most. They force insurers to cover everyone at the same price without respect to age, gender, or health status--even if these customers use drastically different amounts of health care each year or if they wait to purchase coverage until they fall ill. Another major regulation forces insurers to pay for an expansive list of “essential health benefits," even when the customer doesn't need or want to pay for that coverage. Finally, another burdensome regulation tightly dictates how much insurers must pay out on each health care plan. All of these regulations have driven up the price of premiums by 100 percent nationwide--in some places monthly premiums cost more than someone's mortgage.

Conservatives would like to clear the books of Obamacare’s most costly regulations and free the states to regulate their markets how they wish—even if that means re-applying these regulations to their market. Should this not be possible, we should at the very least give states the ability to choose which Obamacare regulations they do or do not want to keep. All states would start off without any of these federal health insurance regulations and then they would be able to pick and choose which ones they wanted to keep.

After the debate in the House, it is no longer news that the differences between the moderates and conservatives in the Republican Party on health care policy are substantial. It is unclear right now whether they can be bridged.

But my colleagues and I will keep trying. We will keep meeting every week to hash out our differences and find common ground until we get something done that will lower premiums for millions of Americans while strengthening our safety net programs for those who truly need them.

Another Step Closer to Repealing Obamacare

May 5, 2017

Every time I travel back to Utah I hear from constituents who are paying higher and higher premiums every year, now sometimes higher than their mortgage payments. This has to stop. Now more than ever, Republicans need to repeal Obamacare.

Just this week, Aetna announced they would be pulling out of Virginia’s Obamacare marketplace entirely, leaving 27 counties in the state with just one health insurance provider.

And in Iowa, Medica, the last Obamacare insurance provider in that state, announced they too would be leaving the marketplace, leaving tens of thousands of Iowans without any health insurance options at all.

Ideally, Congress would have repealed Obamacare months ago and both chambers could be working on replacements right now. The initial plan was to have the 2015 repeal bill, which every non-freshman member of the House and Senate already voted for, on President Trump’s desk to sign on Inauguration Day.

But for whatever reasons another path was chosen and now five months later the House of Representatives passed a new repeal bill Thursday that will soon be moving to the Senate.

Unfortunately that bill contains numerous fatal procedural flaws and much of it will have to be rewritten. In fact, it will probably have to be reenvisoned entirely.

Fortunately a diverse group of Republican senators (including moderate and conservative members) have begun working on a new health care framework that can both get 51 votes in the Senate and survive the chambers arcane reconciliation rules.

It is still far too early to tell what this group will produce, but the end result could end up being a huge win for the American people.

Ideally a final product would put Medicaid on a sustainable fiscal path while minimizing disruptions in care for those currently enrolled in the program. It would take steps towards equalizing the tax treatment of health insurance. And it would find a way to better finance health care for low income Americans and those with pre-existing conditions without disrupting the health care market for the rest of the country. At a minimum this would mean repealing all or most of the Obamacare insurance regulations or at least require states to opt in to them.

A bill like the one outlined above would deliver real relief to millions of Americans who are paying unthinkably high health insurance premiums for benefits they can rarely claim because the deductibles on their insurance plans are so high. It would also protect those vulnerable populations that are most in need of public health care assistance including expectant mothers, children, the disabled, and those with pre-existing conditions.

I can’t promise the Senate’s final product will look exactly like the one sketched out above. But I can promise I will fight as hard as possible to make Obamacare repeal a reality.

Chairman's Note: What's Next for Syria

April 7, 2017

At 7:36 p.m. ET on Thursday night, the USS Porter and USS Ross naval destroyers launched 59 Tomahawk missiles at the Shayrat Air Base in Syria. Fifty-eight of the missiles reached their intended target, destroying approximately 20 aircraft that United States intelligence sources believe were involved in a Sarin gas attack perpetrated by the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against his own people earlier this week.

In a memo sent to U.S. government agencies Thursday night, but not to Congress, the White House invoked Article 2 of the Constitution, asserting that President Trump has the inherent power to defend the national interest.

“No authorization from Congress is necessary,” the memo reads. “The U.S. strikes were a justified use of force because of several factors, including promoting regional stability, discouraging the use of chemical weapons, and protecting a civilian population from humanitarian atrocities.”

Article 2 of the Constitution is understood to grant the president certain emergency powers to use military force if the country has been attacked or faces imminent attack.

In the past, presidents have cited this power to justify isolated military actions, like President Reagan did when he dropped 60 tons of bombs on Libya after then-President Muammar Gaddafi was linked to a terrorist attack on U.S. soldiers in Germany.

But while the president can order a discrete strike, there is a short shot clock on further action before a president must come to Congress and make his case to the American people. Article 1 of the Constitution clearly grants the power to declare war to Congress, not the president.

This is by design. While the Framers knew a unitary Executive Branch was needed to carry out a war, they also understood that the Legislative Branch, which is closer to the people, was needed to make military action legitimate and accountable.

For now, the Trump administration is signaling that Thursday’s strike falls more into the isolated category of military action. An unnamed defense official told Reuters the attack was a “one-off” with no current plans for escalation. "I would not in any way attempt to extrapolate that to a change in our policy or posture relative to our military activities in Syria today,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters Thursday. “There has been no change in that status."

If this assessment holds, if Thursday’s military action is a one-time event, then what’s done is done. But if further action is contemplated, even future “one-offs,” President Trump must come to Congress and make the case to the American people.

There are simply too many questions that have not been answered. Assad has not attacked the United States nor is he an immediate threat to us. Continuing to weaken Assad's forces carries significant risks, including increasing the power vacuum that terrorist organizations have previously taken advantage of, involving the United States in another long-term regime change, and increasing the potential for confrontation with Russian forces and Iranian proxies operating in Syria.
If we are going to intervene further in Syria, we've got to have a clear plan in mind. We need to know if the plan is to topple Assad. If the plan is to topple Assad, we need to know what a post-Assad Syria would look like and how we are going to get there. But most importantly, we need to know how the plan is going to make the American people safer.

I trust that if the president does choose to act further, he will not only have the answers to these questions, but he will also not hesitate to share them with Congress and ask for the people’s consent for military action.