Kate Gould / Friends Committee on National Legislation – 2019-02-08 23:17:19
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-joint-resolution/37/cosponsors
ACTION ALERT: On Monday, February 11, House Will Vote on Ending US Support for War on Yemen
Kate Gould / Friends Committee on National Legislation
To: House Rules Committee
Dear Representative,
(February 8, 2019) — We urge you to co-sponsor and vote in favor of House Joint Resolution 37, which invokes the War Powers Resolution of 1973 to end unconstitutional US military participation in the Saudi-led coalition’s military campaign in Yemen. The bipartisan joint resolution was introduced by Representatives Khanna, Pocan, Jones, Jayapal, McGovern, Schiff, Adam Smith, Buck, Biggs, and others, on January 30th, 2019.
The war in Yemen has helped create the largest humanitarian crisis in the world, according to the UN, with roughly 12 million people at risk of famine. Aid agencies have described Yemen as the worst place in the world to be a child — the conflict has claimed the lives of at least 85,000 children under the age of five from hunger and disease.
More than 1 million people have been infected with cholera, with an alarming 10,000 new cases each week. All of the parties have demonstrated a near-total indifference to the welfare of Yemeni civilians. In one particularly harmful example of this, the Saudi-led coalition has imposed a de-facto blockade on Yemen and impeded the flow of food, fuel, and medicine, pushing prices of essential goods out of reach for millions of Yemenis.
On December 13th, 2018, the US Senate, led by Senators Bernie Sanders, Mike Lee and Chris Murphy, passed an identical measure, S.J.Res. 54, with a 56-member bipartisan majority.
Aid group Oxfam America noted, “It was no coincidence that on the same day the Senate passed the War Powers Resolution in December 2018, we saw the most substantive and encouraging breakthroughs in peace talks,” and upon its reintroduction this year, declared, “It’s time to remind the world that Americans will not stand by while our government further imperils millions of innocent people caught in a bloody, senseless war.”
Furthermore, it is clear that aspects of the United States’ involvement in Yemen are fully outside of the scope of the Constitution and fly in the face of the explicit delegation of war powers to Congress in Article I.
James Madison, the “father of the Constitution,” once wrote:
“The constitution supposes, what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the legislature.”
We urge the House of Representatives to reassert Congress’s authority over war and peace by passing H.J.Res. 37. We ask that you cosponsor and vote in favor of this bill to send a clear signal to the Executive Branch that unconstitutional US participation in the Saudi-led coalition’s military campaign in Yemen must end.
Thank you for your consideration of this urgent matter.
Sincerely,
Action Corps
Action Corps NYC
Chicago Area Peace Action
Chicago Area Peace Action – DePaul
Chicago Area Peace Action – Loyola
Coalition for Peace Action
CodePink
Demand Progress
Environmentalists Against War
Friends Committee on National Legislation
Just Foreign Policy
Massachusetts Peace Action
New Hampshire Peace Action
New Jersey Peace Action
Peace Action
Peace Action Baltimore
Peace Action Maine
Peace Action Montgomery (Maryland)
Peace Action Network of Lancaster
Peace Action New York State
Oxfam America
Yemeni Alliance Committee
Yemen Freedom Council
Yemen Peace Project
Women’s March
ACTION: If your organization would like to sign on to this effort by MONDAY Feb 11th at 5 PM, you can fill out this form.
Kate Gould is the Legislative Director for Middle East Policy at the Friends Committee on National Legislation, a Quaker Lobby in the Public Interest. 245 2nd St. NE, Washington, DC 20002
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