This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, September 3rd, 2013.

I'm Caleb Brown.

We should be very clear when the President asks Congress to vote on whether or not to strike

Syria, he's not asking for constitutional

authority to attack.

John Samples, director of the Cato Institute Center for Representative Government,

says, however, a debate in Congress is exactly what's needed.

Well there's this tortured history of the last 20 years of both Congress approving

wars and presidents using force in small wars when they wanted to.

In the approval process, in at least one and strongly suggested

that they had the authority to make the war anyway but they were coming

to Congress to get the approval.

What's strange about this I I guess, in the last 20 years

is that Obama foresees, and most people foresee a very limited engagement or limited use of

force of another small war,

and he's treating it like it was a major war

where Americans were expected to be killed.

I thought at first that he would probably

use the Clintonian consultation out.

Clinton, when he was in political trouble in the 1990s, about the time in 1998 in particular

because of the problems of that year did consult

with the Senate in a certain way and you know he had to politically.

...