There are two ways to look at what happened in Congress last week regarding President Donald Trump’s war against Iran. Looked at from one angle, the House and Senate, by narrow margins on largely party-line votes, rejected resolutions to end military operations against Iran. Taken up under an expedited procedure laid out by the War Powers Act, the resolutions would have limited the operations to 30 days and barred the president from introducing ground troops. Republican leaders could have used parliamentary maneuvers to delay action on the resolutions, which were mainly being pushed by Democrats. But confident there would be only a handful of Republicans willing to buck the president, they gave them their vote. It was a victory for the president and his policy. But viewed from a different angle, it was another example of Congress’ unwillingness to exercise its rightful and exclusive role in the constitutional order to decide if the country should be at war. If they really thought the war was necessary and just, Republicans should have used the War Powers Act to pass a joint resolution authorizing military action with whatever limits they thought necessary, and sent it to the president for his signature. But Republican leaders didn’t do that, for reasons that are both politically cynical and constitutionally pernicious. Politically cynical because, if things turn out badly and the war turned out to be another costly and misguided military adventure, Republican members can still tell voters they only voted against another transparent political ploy by Democrats to undermine and embarrass the president, who in any case could have vetoed the resolution if it had passed. The constitutionally pernicious reason for not passing a resolution authorizing the war is that Republican leaders didn’t want to challenge the president’s assertion that he has all the authority he needs as commander in chief to launch a war wherever and whenever he wants, and that what Congress thinks is legally and constitutionally irrelevant. In other words, the Republicans in Congress could have given the president the green light to prosecute a war against Iran while reaffirming their own power and prerogatives. Or they could bow to the president’s monarchical claims and dismiss the Democratic resolutions as constitutionally meaningless. In choosing the latter, they put loyalty to party and Trump over loyalty to the Constitution they promised to protect and the institution they swore to defend. It was a shameful abdication of responsibility for which they may pay a steep political price. And that’s not the only price to be paid. At $1 billion a day, the cost of bringing Iran to its knees will require the president to ask Congress for additional funds for the Pentagon for the current fiscal year, offering Congress another opportunity to weigh in. Senate Democrats will likely threaten to filibuster the supplemental funding bill in spite of the political risk of withholding funds for troops in battle. With gas prices rising and death and destruction continuing to play out on cable news, some Republicans are likely to waver in their support for the war. So Republican leaders are already talking about wrapping the war funding into a larger package that also includes billions for disaster relief and yet more aid to farmers suffering from the Trump tariffs — a must-pass, all-or-nothing package that few Republicans will feel free to vote against. You can expect this package will be written behind closed doors by Republican leaders and the White House, with no input from Democrats, no hearings on the war’s rationale or progress, no amendments that might give members a chance to set any limits on the military operation, and no time for members or the public to read the fine print before the vote. After a few hours of perfunctory debate and last-minute concessions to Republican holdouts, the package adding another $100 billion to an already record-breaking $1.9 trillion annual budget deficit will squeak by with the narrowest of margins on party-line votes in both chambers. And that, Mr. and Mrs. America, is how endless wars begin. The president has said that, as far as the war in Iran is concerned, he’ll accept nothing less than unconditional surrender. The Republican Congress is already waving the white flag. Steven Pearlstein is the director of the Fixing Congress Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania. He was a longtime writer and columnist for The Washington Post. He is also Robinson Professor of Public Affairs at George Mason University. The views expressed here are his own.
