Congress to Debate War Already Underway03/02 06:33

   The U.S. Congress is about to launch a war powers debate over President 
Donald Trump's authority to bomb Iran under largely unusual circumstances -- he 
has already done it, and the country is essentially already at war.

   WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. Congress is about to launch a war powers debate 
over President Donald Trump's authority to bomb Iran under largely unusual 
circumstances -- he has already done it, and the country is essentially already 
at war.

   Bombs are falling, people are dying and vows of revenge and retribution are 
being lobbed in escalating threats, all while untold taxpayer dollars are being 
spent on a military strategy that's expected to continue for weeks with an 
undefined goal and conclusion. Unlike the run-up to the Iraq War in 2003, which 
included long debates in Congress in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, 
attacks, or the more recent U.S. military strikes on Venezuela that proved to 
be limited, the joint U.S.-Israel military attack on Iran, called Operation 
Epic Fury, is well underway, with no foreseeable end in sight.

   At least three U.S. military personnel have been killed, and Trump warned on 
Sunday "there will likely be more."

   The moment is a defining one for Congress, which alone has the authority 
under the U.S. Constitution to declare war, and for the Republican president, 
who has consistently seized power during his second term with an apparent 
limitless view of his own executive reach.

   "The Constitution is intended to prevent the accumulation of power in any 
one branch of government -- and in any one person in government," said David 
Janovsky, acting director of The Constitution Project at the Project on 
Government Oversight, a watchdog organization.

   "Congress is the people's representatives in a way that the president isn't, 
even though we tend to focus on the president," he said. "We need the people's 
representatives to weigh in on whether we, the people, are going to war right 
now."

   War powers as a check on presidential power

   In the U.S., the Congress would need to affirmatively approve wartime 
operations, with a declaration of war, or with an authorization for the use of 
military force, to essentially approve of the actions. But this rarely happens.

   In fact, Congress has declared war just five times in the nation's history, 
most recently in 1941, to enter World War II a day after the Pearl Harbor 
attack. Congress approved an AUMF for the 1990 Gulf War and did so again in 
2001 and 2002 to launch the 9/11-era wars into Afghanistan and then Iraq.

   But Congress also created the war powers resolution during the Vietnam 
War-era, as something of a tool of last resort -- deployed to slap back a 
president who had embarked on military excursions without congressional 
approval.

   Both the House and the Senate have prepared war powers resolutions for votes 
this week.

   Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, 
said Trump, as president, "does not have the right to do this on his own."

   "When the president commits American forces to a war of choice, he needs to 
come before Congress and the American people and ask for a declaration of war," 
Warner said on CNN's "State of the Union."

   While lawmakers have criticized the Iranian regime and its nuclear 
ambitions, Democrats said Trump has not provided a rationale for the war or 
outlined its strategy for what comes next, and Trump's MAGA coalition is 
splintering over what it sees as the president's failure to keep his "America 
First" campaign promise by leading the U.S. toward an overseas war. Many 
lawmakers are wary of a longer entanglement as the operation killed Iran's 
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and hundreds of people in the region.

   White House officials are scheduled to brief congressional leaders and 
lawmakers this week, but the question-and-answer sessions will be behind closed 
doors, without a watchful public.

   Power of the purse can stop wars

   Over time, presidents of both major political parties have accumulated vast 
authority to engage in what are often more limited U.S. military strikes to 
accomplish strategic national security goals without approval from Congress. 
Democrat Barack Obama's military operations over Libya and Republican George 
H.W. Bush's incursions into Panama were conducted without the nod from Congress.

   But restraining a president's war powers is something lawmakers past and 
present have rarely been able to accomplish. Even if Congress is able to pass a 
war powers resolution to curb Trump in Iran, the House and the Senate would be 
unlikely to tally the two-thirds majority needed to overcome a presidential 
veto.

   Trump has shrugged at the power of Congress to dictate what he can and can't 
do, in war and other matters. He made only a brief mention of Iran in his State 
of the Union address last week, treating lawmakers' support as an afterthought.

   John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said 
the Founding Fathers set up a constitutional system in which the president and 
Congress would battle it out over these issues -- but with Congress having one 
particularly powerful tool, because it controls the federal funding.

   "Congress, they know how to stop this if they want to," said Yoo, who helped 
draft the Bush administration's 2001 and 2002 use of force authorizations. The 
Vietnam War ended once Congress pulled funding, he said.

   But Congress is controlled by a Republican majority that largely shares 
Trump's view of focusing military power against Iran, and it recently approved 
massive new funds for the Pentagon, some $175 billion, in the big tax cuts bill 
that he signed into law last yar.

   With the Republican president's party in power in the House and the Senate, 
it's no surprise they are unlikely to object, Yoo said: "They agree with him."

   Debate in Congress begins

   Ahead of debates, Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, the chairman of the Senate 
Intelligence Committee, said Trump already laid out his vision for Iran.

   Cotton said Sunday that Trump has made it clear the U.S. won't be sending 
ground forces inside Iran. Instead, Americans should expect to see an "extended 
air and naval campaign" in the region, which could result in pilots being shot 
down, though he said the military personnel would be recovered.

   He expects a weekslong campaign as Iran names a new leader and determines 
how it will react to the U.S. attack.

   "There's no simple answer for what's going to come next," Cotton said on 
CBS' "Face the Nation."