A resolution to rein in President Donald Trump's war powers failed in the Senate, but a veteran lawmaker said Congress has a powerful tool to influence the conflict against Iran.
Senators voted 53-47, largely along party lines, against a resolution that would have blocked further U.S. military action against Iran without congressional approval under the 1973 War Powers Act, but former congresswoman Jane Harmon published a column for The Bulwark reminding lawmakers of another weapon in their legislative arsenal.
"Although Congress was not included in the leadup to this conflict, many members in both chambers simply do not want to authorize this war for fear of 'owning' it if things go wrong," Harmon wrote. "But there is a far more direct way for Congress to intervene and to show constituents it remains focused on the kitchen-table issues that decide elections: the power of the purse."
The price tag for the war is reportedly about $1 billion per day, and Harmon said Congress must confront the cost now.
"In January, President Trump called for a 50 percent increase in the annual defense budget — from roughly $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion — the largest proposed single-year jump since the Korean War," she wrote. "Congress should not wave these numbers through. Article I of the Constitution gives Congress the power to raise and support armies and to appropriate military funds."
The 79-year-old president insists the U.S. has a “virtually unlimited supply” for a war that might last "forever," while also summoning the CEOs of Lockheed Martin and Raytheon for a meeting to discuss emergency production increases, which Harmon said was an alarming gap between public reassurance and private worries.
"A conflict that widens into a regional war, costs trillions, and adds to a national debt already at 122 percent of GDP is not a foreign policy abstraction," she wrote. "It will show up in inflation, in interest rates, in the cost of groceries and mortgages — in every congressional district in America. Several Republican senators have already drawn their own line: a ground war, they say, would require explicit congressional authorization. The administration has refused to rule it out. That is precisely why Congress should be engaged now, through the one tool it has always had: control of the money."
"The War Powers Resolution is a statement," Harmon concluded. "The power of the purse is the real weapon. Congress should start using it."
