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Congressional Daily Record
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April 30, 2026
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Download official Senate Record PDFReturn to issue contextMr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I rise today in strong support of Senator Schiff's War Powers Resolution to end President Trump's illegal war against Iran.
Let's begin with a simple fact. We are now over 60 days into this illegal war. The war was started on February 28. A few days later, on March 2, President Trump and his administration submitted the notice to Congress. So even if you take the date of submission, tomorrow will be the 60 days. Of course, we don't want to create incentives for any administration to delay the submission of the notice. So the clock has run. But let's just be clear. Accepting their view of the world, tomorrow will be the 60th day—60 days since President Trump, together with Prime Minister Netanyahu, started this war against Iran—a war started without congressional authorization, without articulating any clear American interest, and without telling the American people the truth about what this war would cost.
of it. The American people know that, which is why they overwhelmingly oppose this war and they want to see us bring it to an end now. Yet here we are over 60 days later. Fourteen American soldiers have been killed, hundreds of American troops wounded, thousands of civilians in the region killed, and at least $25 billion of taxpayer money already burned. We face even more regional instability in an already volatile part of the world. And we have an administration that cannot explain what it is they are trying to achieve. They can't explain it today. They couldn't explain it the day they started the war.
pledged that the war would be resolved “quickly”—a promise he has made and then broken many times.
President Trump declared that we had won. He said: “We won.”
Well, if we won, what the hell are we doing there? And the reality is we haven't won anything. Negotiations to
end it are off again. Then they are on. Then they are off.
Strait of Hormuz, which was open the day before this war started. And now, reportedly, the President is preparing for an extended blockade of Iran, prolonging a conflict that has already driven up prices daily in the United States.
in the United States. He has also kept American servicemembers deployed overseas for recordbreaking periods and expended a huge amount of munitions, creating shortages in our supplies elsewhere.
So what is the plan? What is the plan? Just to pursue an open-ended blockade, costing taxpayers billions of dollars—in fact, $1 billion a day—and further jeopardizing the global economy, offering no clear path to ending the war?
from getting a nuclear weapon. Well, this is the President who tore up the Iran nuclear deal, or JCPOA, that was negotiated by President Obama, which kept Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and had probably the most intrusive inspection regime in arms control history.
said that Iran was not pursuing a nuclear weapon. And, of course, after the military operations, in June of last year, against Iran's nuclear program, President Trump told the country that Iran's nuclear program was “obliterated.”
back in 2011 because it is revealing as to the President's mindset. We know that this President often engages in projection. Here is what he said, back in 2011, about then-President Obama. He said:
Our President will start a war with Iran because he has
absolutely no ability to negotiate. He's weak and he's
ineffective. So the only way he figures that he's going to
get reelected—and as sure as you're sitting there—is to
start a war with Iran.
Citizen Trump back in 2011 about President Obama.
obtaining a nuclear weapon. President Trump, in his first term, tore it up.
But here is Donald Trump, essentially telling us what he thinks. Obviously, Donald Trump couldn't negotiate a deal with Iran, and so he started a war with Iran, exactly what he was claiming that President Obama would do, because he claimed President Obama didn't have the skills to negotiate an agreement to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.
So here we are. Just to recap, the President started a war to stop what he had called an “obliterated” nuclear program and to reopen an international waterway that was open before he started the war. And since he started this war, along with Prime Minister Netanyahu, the justifications have been inconsistent and ever-changing, zigzagging here and there.
country into a complete strategic mess, with no end in sight, and ever- rising costs that Americans have to bear, both in tax dollars expended and in higher prices at the pump and elsewhere.
have one of their decisionmakers testify in front of Congress was because what he heard behind closed doors revealed that there was no plan and no endgame.
Hegseth, and the American people can see in plain view that they have no plan. And yet this is the Secretary of the administration that is now asking this Congress to provide a $1.5 trillion defense budget.
They just want to blow the roof off of the budget. And, of course, this is a Pentagon and Defense Department that have been unable to meet an audit.
So what are we going to do at this point? We have got $25 billion gone. In fact, many people think that is a lowball estimate. But the reality is that we could put that money to much better use.
We could use it to help our fellow Americans. But, no, Donald Trump said: We can't do that. We don't have the resources for that because we need the resources for this war—a war he said he would never start. In fact, what he said is—and I am quoting:
It's not possible for us to take care of day care, [and]
Medicaid, [and] Medicare, all these individual things
[because] we're fighting wars.
The wars he said he would never start.
and his billionaire buddies and the biggest billionaire Cabinet in American history by far. Maybe they don't care about higher gas prices. But, I can tell you, Americans who are going to fuel their cars at the pump, they care. They are the ones bearing the burden here in America of this illegal Trump war.
rapid rate, munitions that should have been reserved for real national emergencies that we might face elsewhere in the world.
when he testified in the House yesterday, which is his utter contempt— his utter contempt—for the guardrails we put in place to prevent civilian harm in war. That is why I led nearly the entire Democratic caucus, a few weeks ago, in demanding answers and accountability on the U.S. airstrike that hit an elementary school in Iran, killing over 175 people, most of them children.
But Secretary Hegseth, he is dismissive of all of these concerns. In fact, he said that the rules of engagement were “stupid”—rules designed to prevent innocent people from getting killed in war.
He should never have been nominated. He should never have been confirmed, and he should be relieved of duty today.
they so brazenly say they don't want to comply with rules designed to prevent civilian harm which, in the long run, are also designed to help protect the lives of our troops?
here because, as I cited at the top of my remarks, we are now 60 days into this war, yesterday, or if we accept the administration's interpretation, tomorrow—60 days.
authority to start a war and fight a war for 2 days, 3 days, 4 days— let alone 60 days. But that is what President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu did. They started the war.
faces an imminent threat that requires the President to engage in hostilities overseas, that we will have a clock to make sure that Congress, as representatives of the American people and given the power in the Constitution to declare war, has time to consider and debate. And it says you have 60 days, even if you are fighting a war that somebody else started.
exercise the ability under the War Powers Resolution for another 30 days, on top of the 60 days. So that gives you 90 days.
But here is the thing. The War Powers Resolution is very clear. That additional 30 days is not to ramp up a war. It is to ramp down a war. It is to bring American troops who are in hostility safely home. And yet here we are, around the 60th day, and President Trump, reportedly, is contemplating upping the tempo of the war, increasing strikes against Iran.
interpretation of the War Powers Act. Are they going to sit here and say nothing and do nothing while the President blatantly violates the War Powers Resolution? So far, they have been silent as he violated the constitutional requirement that only the Congress can declare war.
colleagues have expressed, the plain reading of the War Powers Resolution says: The next 30 days have to be used to wind down hostilities.
Services Committee here in the Senate, said: Well, we are now in a cease-fire. So the clock was paused. It is not ticking.
What a pile of nonsense. Here we have a full-on blockade, which we know is an active war, and the Secretary of Defense, who clearly just makes things up as he goes, is arguing that that somehow paused the statute.
buy into that ridiculous interpretation of the law. But that is apparently the lie that the Secretary of Defense is trying to perpetrate as we speak.
So let's be honest with the American people. We have a situation where the President, along with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, started a war against Iran. There was no imminent threat. They started it, and they did it without any congressional authorization.
authorize the use of force. It would be great to see people take that kind of accountability. If you support the President's action, put forward an authorization for the use of military force—not a peep about that.
Powers Resolution, which even the interpretation of Senate Republicans requires the President of the United States to spend the next 30 days winding down this war, not stepping up this war.
So really, colleagues, you should level with the American people. We have a President who promised to keep us out of wars. We have a President who said he was going to bring down prices.
He has done the exact opposite. He started wars. Prices are going up. Americans have been killed. Americans have been wounded. Thousands of civilians have been killed, thousands more wounded. And we are less safe and worse off.
When you are digging a hole, stop digging.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I want to thank Senator Schiff for bringing another War Powers Resolution before this body. I have lost count on how many votes we have had, but we are doing this for one reason and one reason only: The Republican majority refuses to do its constitutional and statutory responsibility.
The Constitution says we declare war. The President doesn't get to make war without the consent of Congress, and our Founders were very intentional, investing that power in us. They did not want an unchecked, runaway Executive being able to make war overseas without the consent of the people.
And I hear in Senator Van Hollen's voice his anger. I think we all are angry that our colleagues are not allowing this body to do its job, but we are also angry that the cost of this war is not being borne by Members of the U.S. Senate, is not being borne by Donald Trump's billionaire and corporate friends; the cost of this war is being borne by American consumers, by American small businesses, by American farmers.
state of the American economy and what the state of the global economy—inextricably linked to the American economy—is today, 60 days after this illegal war began.
The scoreboard is gas prices. Americans today are paying, on average, about $4.30 a gallon. Gas prices are up 20 to 30 percent from the beginning of the war. The price of Brent crude is now over $120 a barrel compared to $70 before the war.
the war. That is the only reason that Americans are paying those extraordinary amounts at the pump.
And let's put this in real terms. If you are a commuter in this country who has a longer than average commute, you are probably buying somewhere short of a thousand gallons a year in auto fuel. And so when the price jumps by $1—and it may soon jump by $2—that is $1,000 to $2,000 out of your pocket.
Forty percent of American families are living paycheck to paycheck. Forty percent of American families have less than $400 in the bank in liquid assets ready to spend on an emergency like a car repair or an emergency medical bill. And so when you are spending a thousand dollars more every year just to fill up your tank, you go from being on the brink of financial crisis into financial crisis.
And, again, this isn't bad luck. This isn't a natural disaster. Donald Trump chose to increase gas prices in this country to $4.30 a gallon. Diesel prices are up even more. Diesel prices are up 50 percent. This is the fuel that America's farmers and America's trucking industry uses. And our farmers were already dealing with the consequences of tariffs. Seventy percent of farmers right now in this country say that they will not have enough money in order to plant the next crop because the tariffs and the diesel prices are putting many of them out of business. Bankruptcies of farms are up almost 50 percent from before when Trump was President.
Inflation was 2.8 percent before the war, well above the Federal Reserve's target. It is now 3.5 percent. That is an extraordinary increase, largely driven by fuel costs, but the cost of everything else—cost increases for everything else are coming very soon as well.
Airfare prices, up by 25 percent. So if you are online right now looking to book a ticket for your family's vacation, if you are planning far ahead and booking tickets for Thanksgiving or Christmas, you are paying 25 percent more than you would have paid before the war. Reason for higher airline prices? The war.
But this crisis is spiraling around the world because oil, $120 a barrel, is what fuels our fabrics and clothing industry globally. So the cost of polyester and nylon is going up and up and up. And so in the sewing hubs of Bangladesh and other countries that send products to Walmart, where a lot of Americans buy their clothes, we are starting to see production interruptions because of the high price—increasingly high price—of the components of fabrics.
to produce medical devices like syringes and catheters because of the high, increasing price of plastic. Aluminum prices have been rising ever since the war in the Middle East started because of attacks on aluminum smelters in Iran and other Gulf countries. Helium, a product that is produced in the Middle East, the price is going through the roof, and so the semiconductor manufacturing industry globally is facing shortages because helium is an important product for semiconductors.
So it is not just gas prices. You are about to see a spike in the cost of technological products, automobiles, fabrics, clothing, medical devices. Everything is getting more expensive because of one person's insane decision. No President, Republican or Democrat, prior to Donald Trump made the decision to invade Iran, to launch a full-scale war against Iran, because they were told the consequence of doing that is the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and there is no military response by the United States that will reopen the strait.
Republican or Democrat, decided not to wage a full-scale war on Iran because they knew one of the consequences would be the meltdown of the American economy and the meltdown of the global economy. And it would not be billionaires and big corporations that would pay the price. It would be regular Americans, regular minimum-wage Americans, middle- class Americans who would pay that price.
American consumers gets higher and higher—their summer travel, their plane tickets, their clothing, their groceries—there is only one person to blame: Donald Trump. And there is only one party to blame: the Republican Party, which could choose to join us and vote for one of these resolutions to end the war, to allow us to get back to a point where prices are coming down instead of spiraling upward. This is a choice that our Senate Republican colleagues make every week, to vote
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.
Ms. BALDWIN. Mr. President, I rise today on behalf of the American people who are against Donald Trump's illegal war with Iran. This war has taken the lives of 13 servicemembers—hundreds more are injured, many severely. This war has cost American taxpayers upward of $25 billion and is jacking up the cost of energy, fuel, and fertilizer for Wisconsin families and farmers.
I have been clear since this conflict began 2 months ago: President Trump did not have the authority to start this war with Iran. We were not under attack from Iran. We were not under imminent threat of an attack from Iran. Therefore, President Trump was required to ask Congress, the people's branch, for authorization.
American people for why an all-out war with Iran was worth it. But the Trump administration did not follow the law. Donald Trump dragged the United States into a war of choice without a clear explanation.
It happened without open hearings or public debates or a timeline. He started a war with Iran without a clear reason or plan to get us out. That is why we are still at war 2 months later.
endless war, but this administration still hasn't committed to a timeline for getting us out.
why they have abdicated their duty to be a check on President Trump, but even if this war of choice was allowed under law, Congress still has to play a role.
Trump could wage this war for 60 days without getting Congress' approval. But regardless, that clock that they just set up has run out. We are coming up on 60 days since the President notified Congress of military action in Iran. And as Republicans keep telling me, that deadline matters. On the 60-day mark, President Trump must cease military action or receive congressional authorization. My Republican colleagues know this. They have said as much, calling this deadline a “big deal” and a “trigger” that requires Congress to act.
So here is Republicans' chance to act. You said the President had 60 days to wage a war and that he needed Congress to sign off? Well, it has been 60 days. It is time to do your constitutional duty to rein in this President and stop this illegal war that is jacking up Americans' costs while accomplishing next to nothing.
Iran still has nuclear materials. They still have ballistic missiles and drones to attack us, a blockade on the Strait of Hormuz, and the same oppressive regime in place. It is time to show the American people where you stand on this war. Join us in forcing the Trump administration to come to Congress, to explain to the American people why we are at war, and make their case for why this war should continue.
If they can't, then we shouldn't be at war, period.
I yield the floor.
(Mrs. MOODY assumed the chair.)
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Hagerty). The Senator from California.