There’s an inside-the-Beltway knife fight happening right now on whether we will get on vote on a bipartisan amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act to prohibit the transfer of cluster bombs to Ukraine. Historically, when the dissidents have won this kind of knife-fight against the leadership, it was often because the lead sponsor of the amendment from the majority party threatened to vote with the minority party to take down the rule for consideration of the bill. That’s how Justin Amash forced a vote on the Amash-Conyers amendment to prohibit unconstitutional NSA spying on Americans. He threatened Republican leadership that if they didn’t allow a vote on his amendment, he would vote with Democrats to take down the rule. That’s how Jamaal Bowman forced a vote on his Syria War Powers Amendment. He threatened Democratic leadership that if they didn’t allow a vote on his amendment, he would vote with Republicans to take down the rule. This path requires having a Champion from the majority party in the House who is willing to use their leverage like that.
But when the issue is a question of war and peace, there’s another path to having leverage to force an amendment vote, which is to threaten to introduce a War Powers Resolution. A War Powers Resolution is privileged. It forces a vote. And the people who want to prevent a debate and vote might well see a War Powers Resolution vote as worse for them than a vote on an NDAA amendment, because a War Powers Resolution vote will attract more attention and media coverage and engagement than an NDAA amendment vote. Furthermore, making the threat sets up the next fight. If the majority party amendment co-lead says: “If you don’t allow a vote on my amendment, I’m going to introduce a War Powers Resolution,” and then they don’t get a vote on their amendment, they can say: “OK, here’s my War Powers Resolution, you forced me to do this by not allowing me a vote on my amendment.”
For example: when Ro Khanna first introduced the Yemen War Powers Resolution in the House, part of the argument he made to his colleagues was that House leadership had prevented him from getting a vote on an amendment to prohibit the Pentagon refueling of Saudi warplanes bombing Yemen. At the time introducing a War Powers Resolution was widely seen as an Extreme Measure. But Khanna basically said: you people forced me to do this. I tried using “regular order.” You people blocked me.
Now, some people might claim that in the present juncture, introducing a Ukraine War Powers Resolution in the House would be a more “extreme” measure than Introducing a Yemen War Powers Resolution in the House was in 2017, because many Democratic House Members who oppose the transfer of cluster bombs to Ukraine support the war overall. These Democrats might vote to prohibit the transfer of cluster bombs to Ukraine. There’s no way they’re voting to cut off all U.S. military assistance to Ukraine.
But here’s the thing that a lot of people may not sufficiently appreciate. The War Powers Resolution isn’t one-zero. Congress can use it to prohibit anything they want, and stay silent on anything they don’t want to prohibit. The Yemen War Powers Resolution passed by Congress is a perfect example. It did not prohibit the whole war. It prohibited the refueling of Saudi warplanes bombing Yemen. Trump could have signed it and said he was already complying with it, which he was. Trump had already stopped the refueling in anticipation of Congressional passage of the bill. Trump vetoed the bill because of the purported “principle” that Congress wasn’t going to tell him what to do, which in fact is exactly what Congress was doing; and because Trump was so pro-Saudi that he wasn’t going to tolerate any Congressional insult to his Saudi regime friends if he could prevent it. It didn’t seem urgent at the time, to put it mildly, to explain to anyone that Trump was already complying with the law. It seemed more urgent at the time to try to stoke outrage over Trump’s veto.
And remember: the point of all this right now is not that we’re trying to prepare the ground for a Ukraine War Powers Resolution. The point is that we’re looking for leverage to get a vote on our NDAA amendment.