On Thursday, the Senate voted 49 to 50 against a resolution directing the president to end U.S. hostilities with Iran unless Congress authorizes them. Four Republicans, Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Rand Paul (R-KY), and Thom Tillis (R-NC), voted yes. Democratic Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) voted no, and another Democrat did not vote. It was the fourteenth Senate consideration of a war powers measure since American and Israeli bombing began on Feb. 28.
Whatever a reader thinks of the war, the vote exposes a question that belongs to neither party. When a conflict passes six months and an estimated $42 billion, who decides whether it continues?
The figures come from Stars and Stripes, which reports a Pentagon cost estimate of $42 billion, at least 19 service members killed, and more than 750 wounded. Those are the stakes on which Congress has now voted 14 times without producing a binding result.
The Constitution is explicit. Article I gives Congress the power to declare war and to fund the military. In 1973, Congress passed the War Powers Resolution over President Nixon’s veto to make that authority practical. It requires notice within 48 hours of introducing forces into hostilities and sets a 60-day limit on unauthorized action, with 30 more days to withdraw safely. CBS News reports the administration told Congress in July that military action had “restarted,” which triggered a new 60-day clock. Tillis cited that clock as his reason for voting yes.
That is where the process fails, and it fails regardless of who holds office. Presidents of both parties have read the clock generously. In 2011, the Obama administration argued that limited operations in Libya did not amount to “hostilities” under the statute, and the 60 days passed without authorization. In 2019, a Democratic House and a Republican Senate sent President Donald Trump a bipartisan resolution on Yemen, and he vetoed it. The override attempt fell short of the two-thirds required. The pattern is consistent. Whoever occupies the White House prefers flexibility, and whoever sits in the minority prefers limits.
The instrument itself is the deeper problem. The resolution before the Senate was a concurrent resolution, which does not go to the president and, according to the Daily Caller’s account, carries no legal force. The Supreme Court held in 1983, in INS v. Chadha, that Congress cannot exercise binding legislative power without presenting the measure to the president. So senators can cast a vote that feels decisive, register their position for the midterms, and leave the outcome unchanged. Democrats forced these votes. Some Republicans backed earlier versions, then reversed after meeting with the president, according to CBS. Both behaviors are plausible in an election year. Neither settles anything.
The costs of leaving the question open are concrete. The conflict continues without the specific authorization the resolution itself demanded. Allies and adversaries cannot tell whether Congress stands behind the mission. And taxpayers fund a war through emergency channels, not through the deliberate, line-by-line scrutiny the appropriations process was designed to provide.
I have spent more than two decades as a financial controller, and I recognize a control weakness when I see one. An obligation of this size, with no defined end date and no authorizing vote, would not pass an audit in any organization. Reasonable people can disagree about the war and still agree about the process. Congress can correct this without deciding who was right about Iran.
Three reforms are feasible under the Constitution.
First, make the 60-day limit self-enforcing. Congress could provide that no funds may be obligated for hostilities beyond day 60 unless a joint resolution of authorization has been enacted. A funding cutoff does not depend on a veto fight, and it uses the power of the purse, which Congress has always held. There is precedent: in 1973, Congress ended American combat operations in Southeast Asia by cutting off funds.
Second, give war powers measures the standing of real legislation. Privileged joint resolutions, with guaranteed floor votes, force the president to sign or veto and force members to defend their position on the record. Symbolic concurrent resolutions do neither of those things.
Third, require the Pentagon to report the cost of any sustained conflict to the appropriations committees each quarter. A number that Congress sees only in news reports cannot be governed.
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The strongest objection is that such rules could tie a commander in chief’s hands in a fast-moving crisis. The answer is that a 60-day window already exists, and that emergencies can be met with a prompt authorization vote. If the mission is sound, it can win one.
Every majority will someday be a minority. The test of a war powers rule is whether members would accept it when the other party occupies the White House. If they would not, it was never a principle. It was a position.
Jose E. Navarro is a financial controller and founder of The Navarro Report, a public finance and government accountability publication based in San Diego.