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Congressional Daily Record
This section covers nominations, confirmations, or other executive branch business. It mentions members such as Jeff Merkley.
Official title: War Powers Resolution (Executive Calendar)
Issued
May 12, 2026
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Download official Senate Record PDFReturn to issue contextMr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, this Chamber has before it a very important question: Will Congress embrace and exercise its constitutional responsibility to decide, as Madison put it, the question of war?
That is a heavy responsibility. It is no small matter to decide whether or not the United States should go to war or to decide whether or not to end a war. It is a question of blood and treasure. The lives of thousands can hang in the balance—the lives of soldiers on both sides, the lives of civilians.
5,000 American servicemembers and the deaths of approximately 250,000 civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq and they resulted in massive use of American treasure, some $8 trillion.
responsibility. The question weighs too heavily on us. “Let's let the President decide.”
did, then you know that letting the President decide is unconstitutional. The Constitution did not assign this weighty issue of war to the President. It assigned this weighty issue to all of us here in Congress.
As Madison summarized: The Constitution supposes what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war and most prone to it. The Constitution has accordingly, with studied care, vested the question of war in the legislative branch.
With studied care, the Founders said: No one person should decide the question of whether we go to war. The weight of the decision in blood and treasure is too great, so there needs to be debate. There needs to be viewpoints exchanged before such a significant action is taken. And that is why it is assigned to us.
for the use of military force, or an AUMF. That is the system set up in the 1973 War Powers Act following Vietnam where there was no authorization ever granted, and yet a massive calamity for American servicemembers, some 50,000-plus who died and so many injured and so much treasure expended.
So Congress by law with the signature of the President said: Let's set up a system to take that constitutional provision where the question of war is assigned to Congress and create a format through which it can be considered. And that law—that 1973 law—says the power of war can only be exercised under three possibilities.
One, there is a declaration of war. Second, Congress passes a law and a President signs it into law to create an authorization for war.
Those wars were entered into under a constitutional path. And whether or not any one individual agreed with the outcome, at least it was constitutional in that it was the result of studied debate here in this Chamber and down the Hall in the House of Representatives.
The War Powers Act creates a third option. Under a special condition—sometimes it is referred to as “the condition of imminent threat,” that we are under attack or on the verge of being under attack. The specific language in the War Powers Act says that the power of war can be exercised if there is a national emergency created by an attack upon the United States, its territories, or its Armed Forces.
But it places a 60-day limit on that. Now many experts would say this option was never triggered in this case because there was not a national emergency created by an attack on the United States. But some Members of this body have said: close enough. The threat from Iran was close enough. We consider that a valid third option.
I would disagree, but others had a different opinion and then said: but when that 60 days are up, that is exhausted and the President must withdraw forces as required in the War Powers Act or must come to us with an authorization for the use of military force, which has not happened.
to come to us with an authorization for the use of military force, then it is incumbent on us to pass a