Senate GOP sinks bill to reclaim war powers in Iran

What happened

The Senate on Wednesday voted down a war powers resolution that would have limited President Donald Trump’s ability to continue waging his war in Iran without congressional authorization. The 47-53 vote was mostly along party lines, with bill co-sponsor Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) the only Republican to vote yes and Sen. John Fetterman (Pa.) the only Democrat to vote no. “This essentially is the vote whether to go to war or not,” Paul told reporters.

Who said what

Democrats had “implored a handful of Republicans to break with their party” and “reassert Congress’s control over declaring war,” The Washington Post said. But Republicans “argued that ordering the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the war days after it started would send the wrong message,” even if they had reservations.

This was the eighth war powers resolution that GOP leaders “have successfully, though narrowly, defeated” since Trump returned to office last year, The Associated Press said. “This one, however, was different,” forcing lawmakers to “take a stand” on a deadly and “open-ended conflict that is already ricocheting across the region.”

The resolution’s defeat “should be bone-chilling to the American people who thought that we were done with feckless, poorly run ground wars in the Middle East,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told reporters. “Six Americans have already died for an illegal war that nobody wants. The region is in chaos. American consumers are paying the price. And for what? We still don’t even know the reason for this war.”

What next?

A similar war powers resolution is “expected to get a vote in the House” Thursday, The Wall Street Journal said, and “it, too, is expected to fail, with few Republicans expected to buck the Trump administration.” In another “flashpoint for Capitol Hill,” Politico said, Trump is “expected to submit a request” for an additional “tens of billions of dollars” to “cover the costs of heavy military operations in the Middle East.” Democrats expected to lose the “symbolic” war powers votes, Axios said, but “they’re preparing for a bigger fight over the war’s funding” that “will be less predictable but more consequential.”