Who is Commander In Chief of the US Air Force? Not the President, but he should blame Congress.
Posted: Friday, January 20, 2012
by Highway 101
So when the president boards Air Force 1 he is technically acting under the control of The Secretary of the Air Force (SECAF, or SAF/OS) who is the Head of the US Air Force. The reason is that the constitution of the United States was never amended from “The President shall be commander in chief of the ARMY AND NAVY of the United States” to include the Air Force. This was never done, and so the Air Force is considered a separate branch of the military, therefore the President is not the commander in chief of the Air Force.
So more than 60 years after the USAF was created no one in congress thought to amend the constitution. After 60 years one would think someone in congress would have noticed that things have progressed and we now have an Air Force. This is one omission that congress however cannot lay at the president’s door because it’s not down to the president to change the constitution.
To propose amendments to the constitution in the U.S. Congress, both the House of Representatives and the Senate need to approve by a two-thirds supermajority vote, a joint resolution amending the constitution. When amendments are approved they do not require the signature of the president and they are sent directly to the states for ratification.
Historians may argue that the Air Force was originally part of the army, and so it was, but it’s been a separate branch of the military for so long that someone in congress should have noticed.
Members of congress have in those 60 odd years probably spent the equivalent of several months in the comical process of filibustering which is no more than deliberately wasting time to stop the other side from winning a vote. Senator Strom Thurmond probably broke the record in 1957 by filibustering the Civil Rights Act of 1957 for 24 hours and 18 minutes. Congress could have probably amended the constitution in those 24 hours and 18 minutes to make the president Commander In Chief of the US Air Force.
However even congress draws the line on filibustering when it comes to constitutional amendments. The reason is that a two-thirds majority is needed to pass such a proposal. That is more than the three-fifths majority needed to invoke cloture for ending a filibuster. So usually a filibuster cannot change the outcome, because if a filibuster succeeds, the amendment proposal would not have passed anyway.
So what’s the problem then? Why won’t congress amend the constitution and let the president be Commander In Chief of the US Air Force? Could it be that congress really doesn’t ever want to do anything to please the White House? After all passing such a constitutional amendment would only benefit the president. And there are no votes in it for any congressman or senator simply passing laws to please the president. Well that’s how it looks from the outside.
Doesn’t this one simple US constitutional issue highlight the great political divide between the Executive and Legislative branches of the US government?
Vince Waterson is a telecommunications consultant who lives in California. He can be contacted at email vwaterson@aol.com
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)I suspect congress has quietly adopted the "who cares" attitude after all, who is going to challenge it. It would be interesting if the airforce and the President ever reached a position of variance and the air force turned around to their "Not" Commander in Chief and said "Make Me". I guess technically, he couldnt. I also guess it wouldnt be good for the future careers of those at the top of the air force's chain of command. That's the problem of course, their backsides are very firmly "in the butter" as it were and so why risk their lovely pensions, the President would succeed of course and why shouldnt he......after all his is the President of the USA and he probably doesnt care either.
I suspect you are right...who cares. However it does point to sloppiness in Congress. It may be splitting hairs but lawmakers are supposed to look after the detail. If they don't who else will. The point is. If they can't pass legislation on something that should have been fixed decades ago then what chance is there that they will get to grips with the bigger current issues such as unemployment and healthcare?While you are technically correct, Congress and the President took care of that with a law. See: Title 10 of the United States Code outlines the role of armed forces in the United States Code.
It provides the legal basis for the roles, missions and organization of each of the services as well as the United States Department of Defense. Each of the five subtitles deals with a separate aspect or component of the armed services.
Subtitle A—General Military Law, including Uniform Code of Military Justice
Subtitle B -- Army
Subtitle C -- Navy And Marine Corps
Subtitle D -- Air Force
Subtitle E -- Reserve Components
The current Title 10 was the result of an overhaul and renumbering of the former Title 10 and Title 34 into one title by an act of Congress on 1956-08-10.
US codes are really fillers for gaps left in Amendments to the constitution. Think of them more as footnotes at the end of a book page. So the important title of Commander in Chief of the Air Force is relegated to Uinted States Code 10 subtitle D. This footnote applies to the chief of a military wings that in 2010 employed 323,000 people and had a budget of $106.4 billion. Surely this deserves an amendment to the constitution not a footnote. After all when the President travels abroad he does so in Air Force 1 as also the Commander in Chief of the Air Force and was the case when 9/11 happened he was aboard Air Force 1 exercising his power as the head of the Air Force. Confirmation that is indeed his role should be incorporated in an Amendment not in some footnote.
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