This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, July 21st, 2008.

I'm Caleb Brown, a commission aimed at reforming the War Powers Act is out with its recommendations.

Cato Institute Vice President Jean Healy says, for the most part,

its typical bipartisan Pat.

Healy says, despite what the commissioners believe,

there really isn't any confusion about how the Constitution assigns the power to

declare and execute war.

It's one of Washington's perennial blue ribbon commissions, bipartisan blue ribbon commissions, and this one headed by two

former secretaries of state, James Baker and Warren Christopher, and a bunch of other important

Washington muckity mucks.

And for the most part, the proposal

that the commission has come out with,

the National War Powers Commission,

is something called the War Powers Consultation Act of 2009.

And it's mostly typical bipartisan PAP. It's based on the idea that what we really need is for people on both

sides of the political aisle and people in both branches to sit down together and

talk and that's how we will solve our problems with the allocation of war powers.

The main thing it does, the proposal sets up a joint congressional consultation

committee that, and requires, sort of requires consultation that the president consult with the committee in anything that's a significant armed conflict that's expected to last more than a week.

The consultation requirement is only semi mandatory.

It has an escape clause.

And for the most part, the Commission's proposal proceeds as though the Constitution's allocation of war powers is that Congress has the power to consult about war before or after the President does what he wants anyway. And I don't think that's what the

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