Rather than trying to micromanage military operations through war powers votes, Congress

really should leverage its budget authority to influence how long and where the U.S. is engaged.

It does seem like this is a long-running Washington pattern.

Members of Congress, they like debating the war

powers more than exercising them. So if the war goes well, they can say, oh, yeah, we supported it,

but if it goes badly, they could say, no, no, no, no, the president started this. So the vote

wasn't just about Iran. It was about voiding ownership of the war. The House, they voted down the resolution to 19 to 12.

And it was the second major test of Congress's war powers authority in many days.

Yeah, and I want to give some context here because there's a lot of misinformation that you'll see online about this. For starters,

yes, of course, Congress is the only entity that can officially declare war, but the United States

hasn't declared any war on anybody since World War II. There is the War Powers Act that you hear

mentioned again and again and again. And by the way, just about every president has invoked

the War Powers Act since it came around in 1973.

And what it says is that the president can take military action without authorization from Congress in a limited basis.

Oh, and by the way, when you take military action, you have to inform Congress within 48 hours after doing that.

And you've got this timeframe. It's 60 days and you can

get another 30 day extension onto that. So it's essentially 90 days that you can take this military

action without having to go to Congress and ask for authorization. So Trump has got 90 days here

where he can pretty much do anything he wants. But because we've still got a Republican House and a Republican Senate,

even if this goes over the 90-day period,

I think it's going to be highly unlikely that anything will happen

from a congressional standpoint that would keep Trump

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