Welcome. I'm Justin Logan, the Director of Defense and Foreign Policy Studies here at the Kato Institute, and we are here to talk about bombing Iran again. I'm joined by my colleague Tommy Barry and my colleague Brandon Buck. In a weird twist that is not

consonant with the U.S. government's approach to these things, we thought it might be prudent to

start with the constitutional questions and start with the questions about war powers. So as a

non-lawyer, and Brandon also not a lawyer, we're pleased to have Tommy here to explain to us what the hell is going on with regards to the constitutional and war powers questions. So there was a war powers vote scheduled to have taken place this week that, in my view, was kind of a red cape in front of a bowl because, of course, that if a window looks like it's closing, there's all the incentives to jump through it before it does close. But what is your read on the first cut of whatever arguments the

administration may be making on constitutional grounds and whether they hold muster?

Sure. Well, you're right. Starting with the Constitution is very passe these days. But to go back

to absolute first principles when the framers were drafting the Constitution,

they very much had in mind concerns with the King of England and how the power of the sword

and the purse were consolidated in one person, the power to both declare war and fund wars

and decide how those wars would be carried out,'re all in one person, and they realized how

dangerous that was. So they split the power. The executive power and the commander-in-chief

of the armed forces power are within the president, and those are generally understood to mean

that the president and the military that he commands makes the decisions about how a war will be carried out.

But crucially, Congress has two key powers.

One is the power to declare war.

Now, what that means and what limits that places on the executive is certainly disputed.

And even at the time of the framing, there was some dispute about what, when do you need a declaration of war before

the president can take certain actions. But less commonly thought about, but just as important,

was the power to fund wars. So Congress has all powers of appropriations. And uniquely,

although they can make standing appropriations for other departments of the government that just go on indefinitely, the framers explicitly put a two-year limit on how far in the future Congress could appropriate money to the army.

And the reason for that was exactly the concern that having a standing army that just goes on indefinitely without Congress thinking about, does this

need to be funded, do we like how big this is, could give the president too much unilateral

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