MSNBC "The Ed Show" - Transcript

Interview

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Joining me tonight is Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, who has got some serious problems with our activity in Libya. Congressman, good to have you with us tonight.

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH (D), OHIO: Thanks, Ed. It"s kind of Mr. Donilon to welcome the support of Congress.

SCHULTZ: Well, you have a real problem with this. How wrong is President Obama on this?

KUCINICH: A hundred percent. The Constitution makes it very clear. As a matter of fact, the Barack Obama of 2007, the constitutional scholar, the senator, the would be presidential candidate of 2007 understood that. But somehow the Barack Obama of 2011 doesn"t understand the Constitution anymore.

SCHULTZ: Do you think this is an impeachable offense?

KUCINICH: Well, you know, I raised the question in a phone call with my Democratic colleagues, but I raised it to talk about the limitations of the reach of executive power. I didn"t raise it to start a process.

It is clearly outside the Constitution, Ed. This isn"t even a debatable question at this point. It is outside the Constitution. A president cannot take this country into war unless there is an actual or imminent threat absent the consent of Congress.

SCHULTZ: But other presidents have done it in the past and there have been no ramifications. Your thoughts on that?

KUCINICH: Well, every situation is different. Where we"re looking at right now is America has troops active or in operations in--over Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan. We"re opening up a fourth front here. We had activities over Yemen for a while.

What are we doing here? I mean, if we don"t restrain this executive reach of power, there is no telling where it"s going to lead to.

SCHULTZ: All right. Does this move surprise you, that President Obama did not go to the Congress? And I know that there are a number of your colleagues on the Democratic side, and some on the Republican side actually, who are really troubled by this. Does this move surprise you?

KUCINICH: Yes, it does. I"ll tell you why. Last week, the administration was involved a good part of the week in talking to a number of nations at the U.N. They were able to get ten votes to vote for the resolution. They lined up their ducks with NATO. They talked to the Arab League, got support from the Arab League, which is now their--the Arab League is back tracking on that.

They got support in working with Great Britain and with France. They lined up everybody except they didn"t come to the United States Congress, when they clearly had time to do it. They could have asked Congress to hold up before we left for a recess. They didn"t do that.

SCHULTZ: So do you think that President Obama and the White House decided not to go to the Congress because he might not have gotten support for this?

KUCINICH: I don"t know. I mean, all I know is he didn"t come to Congress. I want you to know, Ed, I"ll be bringing up, when Congress returns, an amendment to the continuing resolution that will seek to strike any funding for the activities--U.S. activities in Libya.

SCHULTZ: So you"re going to go to the money. But what else could be done? Are you willing to say, stop this operation? Would you advocate a vote in Congress that would pull back this activity involved in the no-fly zone?

KUCINICH: Well, if you cut off funds, it"s over. And that"s what I"m going to seek to do. There will be a number of other members who I"m sure are going to be joining me. We just notified members tonight about this.

SCHULTZ: But I"m told that this is in the general fund, the operating budget of the Pentagon to do this. This really didn"t need a special allocation of funds.

KUCINICH: Well, continuing resolution--you could put an amendment in that would be a restrictive amendment, that would essentially stop the president from being able to spend any funds for the operations against Libya.

SCHULTZ: So moving forward, President Obama has done this. What are the--what is the political downfall with his base on this? Your take on that?

KUCINICH: You know, I have to tell you, I mean, I"m so focused on the constitutional aspect, I really haven"t thought much about the political aspects of this. I don"t know the answer to that.

But I can tell you this, that unless Congress takes some action, hopefully to cut off the funds to restrain the overreach by an executive in the use of the war power, we are looking at more danger for this country.

SCHULTZ: And finally, congressman, what should we do with Gadhafi if anything?

KUCINICH: Well, you know, we may not be able to solve that problem. That may be for the people in Libya to resolve, just like the people in Egypt were able to resolve it without our military intervention. The people of other countries have done so.

I think we"ve got to be very careful about U.S. military intervention, humanitarian wars, whatever you want to call it. We can"t afford it. And it"s also very dangerous.

People have the ability to strive to create democracies. We can support that morally. But when we start doing it militarily, things start to change very quickly. And we are going to see that the Libya that we think we"re constructing here is not the Libya we"re going to get.

SCHULTZ: Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, thanks for your time tonight on this subject. I appreciate it.

The costs of the Libya attack are already piling up. What this means for our economic recovery. The numbers and my thoughts on that next.

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