Speech Against Lend-Lease
By Senator Robert Taft (R-OH)
February 1941

Ladies and Gentlemen of the radio audience, I intend to discuss the actual terms and
effect of the so-called Lease-Lend bill. Few people know what its terms really are.
I am going to assume that the great majority of people are in favor of aid to
England. I am also going to assume that a great majority are in favor of our
remaining at peace. The two sentiments are not entirely consistent, and yet they
both exist. If the last election was a mandate for aid to England, because Mr.
Roosevelt and Mr. Willkie both declared in favor of it, it was also a mandate for
keeping the United States out of war, for Roosevelt and Willkie both declared
unequivocally their determination to keep the United States out of war. The people
of the country have the right to assume, and did assume, that whoever was elected,
we would remain at peace unless attacked. I take it therefore that it is the clear
duty of Congress to work out a policy which will avoid the risk of war but aid
England as far as consistent with peace.

In what way can we aid England most effectively? There is not the slightest question
that the greatest need of England is for air planes and other military and naval
equipment. I see no way in which England can bring the war to a satisfactory peace,
except by developing an air force equal to that of Germany, able to do to the German
factories and cities what the Germans have been doing to the English factories and
cities. The only way we could have really aided England this year was to increase
our capacity to make air planes and guns and other munitions. The increase of that
capacity was a question of money and organization. Congress freely voted all money
requested. It is tragic that the first nine months of the war were practically
wasted as far as organization was concerned. It is tragic that while we talked about
aid to England and 20,000 air planes for ourselves, no really effective step was
taken to develop the necessary factories. It is primarily a question of
organization, not of legislation. A nation which can make 5 million automobiles a
year can certainly build 50,000 air planes a year.

There is only one real justification advanced today for the need of additional
legislation at this time. It is said that England is running out of funds and cannot
give any additional orders. Surely the direct way to meet English requirements in
this respect is to authorize such direct loans to England as may be really
necessary, which could be done in the simplest way, without delegating any of the
extraordinary powers contained in the Lease-Lend bill. Such a measure for loans will
do everything in the way of aid to England which can be done effectively without
actual war. It will do it without abandoning democratic principles and the duty of
Congress. It will do it without creating discord and dissention. It will do it many
weeks sooner than the Lease-Lend bill.

The Lease-Lend bill goes far beyond any need, and will give little if any more aid,
although it delegates almost unlimited power to the president to spend our money and
involve us in the war. That bill is the most extraordinary delegation of legislative
power which has ever been proposed to the Congress of the United States either in
wartime or in peacetime. It is far more extreme in its field than the Supreme Court
packing bill was in its field.

In the first place, the bill authorizes the president to sell, lend, lease or give
away our entire army and navy except the men. There can be no question that the bill
contains this extraordinary grant of power. It is one which no Congress, except a
rubber-stamp Congress, could possibly agree to. The Constitution imposes on Congress
the power to raise and support armies, and undoubtedly it has the duty to raise and
support both an army and a navy sufficient for this country's defense. It cannot
abdicate that power by authorizing the president to give the army and the navy away.
The only answer has been that of course the president would be crazy to think of
giving away our battleships and cruisers and air planes and guns. But if he would
not think of using the power, why give him the power? It is universally agreed that
we need a two-ocean navy. Today we haven't even a one-ocean navy. I would regard
it as a violation of my oath to authorize the president to deplete that navy further
at the present time. In spite of all we may do, England may collapse, and we may
face a serious threat from Europe or from Asia.

In the second place, the bill proposes a complete confusion between our own defense
orders and those of the British. We are to give the orders and later deliver the
manufactured equipment to the British. It will never be really satisfactory to them
to have us give their orders. They have already indicated their dissatisfaction with
our airplanes for combat service in England. Responsibility should rest squarely
upon the British or any other power or department of this government for determining
what they wish for contracting for it and receiving and checking it. If we are going
to be of real aid to them, it is better to let them have the money and order what
they need than to have us order and then give it to them. Furthermore it will
confuse our already confused defense program. No one can ever know what we have and
what we don't have. No one can ever know whether we have a complete army and a
complete navy or one with dangerous gaps and deficiencies.

In the third place, the bill authorizes the worst kind of blank-check appropriation.
There is no limit to the money which the president can spend. It is said that this
is merely an authorization bill of the usual type adopted by Congress and that it
must be supplemented by appropriations. But this is not true. Once this bill is
passed, the president may deliver to the British every item of material, equipment
or supplies, ordered by the army or the navy, and already appropriated for. Since we
have appropriated over $10 billion for defense, and will appropriate at least an
equal sum shortly, this bill would permit the president to spend at least $20
billion dollars without further action by Congress, simply on his personal order. He
would then come back to Congress and ask for appropriations to replace the American
equipment which he had given away. Congress of course could not possibly refuse to
give him the money necessary to make up for the deficiencies in our own defense
program. The country at large has always disapproved the theory of blank-check
appropriations. This bill makes the famous $3 billion 300 million public works bill
look like a bill for chicken feed.

Another aspect in which the bill gives authority far beyond anything necessary to
aid Britain is in its failure to specify the countries to whom defense material may
be given. The president may give our army and navy equipment to any country whose
defense the president, in his complete, individual discretion deems vital to the
defense of the United States. That means any country in the world and certainly
includes all of the South American countries and all the countries of Europe except
Germany. Under it, the president might proceed to build up a Russian army, or we
might send our finest tanks to Greece. A lending bill could be confined to England
and Canada and possibly a limited sum to Greece. Loans to China and South America
are already authorized by the Export-Import Bank bill and are being made.

More dangerous, perhaps, than any other authority is the power given in this bill to
the president to make war on foreign nations. It certainly opens our ports to be
used as bases for the British navy. That has always been considered an act of war.
If we abandon neutrality at sea, and the Germans pursue a British cruiser into an
American port, or mine the entrances of the port, as they would have a right to do,
we would be at war regardless of any declaration. The act is so broad that it can
also be construed to authorize the sending of American ships through war zones with
contraband materials, convoyed by American naval vessels. The president says he does
not intend to convoy ships. Then why give him the power? He has changed his mind
before this. If an American naval vessel engaged in combat with a German submarine,
it would be war. One such incident would probably lead to a declaration of war--no
matter which side was right. The Constitution gives to Congress the power to declare
war, it does not give it to the president. Unless Congress is prepared to approve a
declaration of war, it cannot and it should not authorize the president to engage in
acts which are in fact war. Even Mr. Willkie says that Congress should retain in its
hands the fundamental power to declare war.

This bill goes far beyond any reasonable aid by making the United States finance
British purchases from South America, from Australia, from all the British colonies.
Why aren't Australia and South Africa and South American countries as able to
finance their own exports as we are? We have no money with which to pay these bills.
We face a deficit of $10 billion next year. We can only finance Britain by borrowing
money from our own citizens. Surely these other governments have just as much
interest in the outcome of the war and can finance their exports to England by
borrowing from their own citizens.

This Lease-Lend bill might well be called a bill to make the United States the best
and biggest Santa Claus the world has ever seen. No president of the United States,
in wartime or in peacetime, has ever had power to spend without limits. No president
of the United States has ever had power to give away our army or our navy. No
president of the United States has ever had power granted to him by Congress to make
war without a formal declaration of war. No people can give any man such powers and
retain a democratic form of government. Delegation of powers to one individual
because of some supposed emergency has always been the means by which democracies
have committed suicide throughout history. We have a duty to ourselves and to the
world to show that a great nation can function effectively without abandoning the
principles of democratic government in time of peace.

It is the constitutional duty of Congress, first, to keep our army and navy from
being given away; second, to keep our defense program separate from that of the
British, so that both nations may have what is necessary for their own defense;
third, to limit spending to a definite amount; fourth, to limit spending to the
amount really required to finance exports from the United States; fifth, to limit
the assistance to countries that need it: Britain, Canada and Greece; sixth, to take
out of the act the authority to make war on any foreign nation.

If Congress does its duty, we can furnish aid to Britain in three weeks in a bill
thirty lines long, without any of the arbitrary powers which offend every principle
of American democracy. I do not see how Congress can abdicate that duty.