This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, July 9th, 2021.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Democrats running the US House have made some strides in moving to

eliminate past authorizations for the use of military force across the globe.

Arguably, though, they have not repealed the one AUMF that would help Congress reclaim its war power.

Cato's Gene Healy details why and how Congress should reclaim its constitutional role.

If I understand Joe Biden correctly, these AUMFs do not in any way, according to him, limit his ability to wage war.

Well, at least in areas where we're already deployed. So you've seen some mostly

positive movement in the recent recent weeks on the hill for Congress weighing in on whether, how, with whom we go to war.

They repealed on June 17th the House repealed, passed a resolution repealing the 2002 authorization for the use of force against Iraq,

a U.M.UMF that empowered George W Bush to topple the Saddam Hussein regime.

At the end of June, they voted by an even wider margin to repeal to older AUNF.

That's the 1991 AUMF that gave Bush Senior the authorization to kick Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait.

We've been at this a long time.

And the 1957 authorization that was aimed at protecting the Middle East from international communism.

But yeah, in between that first and second vote in the House on Sunday June 27th, Joe Biden for the second time in his young presidency

launched airstrikes against Iranian-backed Shiite militias in the Iraq-Seria border region.

And he said that he could keep doing that without any congressional authorization whatsoever.

He said, I have the authority under Article 2. So what

that points up here is that while these are some welcome moves toward

reasserting congressional control of war power.

Congress has pretty far to go before it meaningfully reclaims that authority in any significant way.

...