To Raise Armies – Constitution Article 1 §8.12

Article 1 §8.12 of the Constitution is about Congress’ power to raise armies. Like declaring war, that’s kind of a big deal. It’s tempting to ignore it, but democracy is a big deal. That’s why I’m studying the Constitution, one clause at a time. I’m up to Article 1 §8.12.

Article 1 §8.12

This is the second in a cluster of clauses (1 §8.11-14) collectively known as “The War Power,” because they all deal with Congress’ role in war. Clause 12 says Congress has the power:

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

To Raise and Support Armies

I just love that phrasing, don’t you? “To raise and support” – it makes armies sound like children.

Like the power to declare war, Framers’ intent in allowing Congress to raise armies was not to stop states from doing so. Having just won a revolt against England, they took it for granted that the point in uniting the states was to achieve the scale necessary for successful warfare. Instead, their interest was – you guessed it! – separating the powers among the branches of Federal government. Like fledgling apartment dwellers, the Framers modeled their system after their parent’s while changing all the things they didn’t like. Before the English Bill of Rights insisted in 1688 that standing armies could not be maintained without the consent of Parliament, the English king could declare and maintain war as much as he liked. It didn’t work out so well. So when we wrote our Constitution, the U.S. Congress got these powers.

Biennial Appropriation of Money

In 1833, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Joseph Story published his three-volume Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States. Wordy as I am, I can usually keep my comments briefer than Story. But in this case I’m going to use his words:

It may be admitted, that standing armies may prove dangerous to the State. But it is equally true, that the want of them may also prove dangerous to the State. What then is to be done? The true course is to check the undue exercise of the power, not to withhold it. This the Constitution has attempted to do by providing that “no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years.” Thus, unless the necessary supplies are voted by the representatives of the people every two years, the whole establishment must fall. Congress may, indeed, by an act for this purpose, disband a standing army at any time…”

Weird, isn’t it? Today the U.S. has the biggest, most expensive military in the world. But when we first started out, even the war veterans who build the place could imagine getting rid of it with a single vote. In fact, technically, Congress could eliminate the military through inaction. Fail to pass a budget and boom! the army falls flat.

Unthinkable Thoughts

Of course it is unthinkable that such a thing would happen. No one would vote to end all military spending. Doing so would literally plunge the entire world into chaos. But it makes one think. The Constitution was written by men who had just won a war against their world’s greatest power. Many of them had been soldiers in that war. They responded to insults with challenges to duel. And yet they imagined a future in which standing armies were not necessary.

There’s a lot of philosophical ground to cover between that future and the world we actually built, where military appropriations are not even questioned. Instead, we talk about appropriating $81 billion dollars for military spending that we don’t even get to know about. How did we get so afraid?