[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 76 (Thursday, April 30, 2026)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2153-S2156]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         WAR POWERS RESOLUTION

  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I rise today in strong support of 
Senator Schiff's War Powers Resolution to end President Trump's illegal 
war against Iran.
  Let's begin with a simple fact. We are now over 60 days into this 
illegal war. The war was started on February 28. A few days later, on 
March 2, President Trump and his administration submitted the notice to 
Congress. So even if you take the date of submission, tomorrow will be 
the 60 days. Of course, we don't want to create incentives for any 
administration to delay the submission of the notice. So the clock has 
run. But let's just be clear. Accepting their view of the world, 
tomorrow will be the 60th day--60 days since President Trump, together 
with Prime Minister Netanyahu, started this war against Iran--a war 
started without congressional authorization, without articulating any 
clear American interest, and without telling the American people the 
truth about what this war would cost.
  This war is making Americans less safe, and we are worse off because 
of it. The American people know that, which is why they overwhelmingly 
oppose this war and they want to see us bring it to an end now. Yet 
here we are over 60 days later. Fourteen American soldiers have been 
killed, hundreds of American troops wounded, thousands of civilians in 
the region killed, and at least $25 billion of taxpayer money already 
burned. We face even more regional instability in an already volatile 
part of the world. And we have an administration that cannot explain 
what it is they are trying to achieve. They can't explain it today. 
They couldn't explain it the day they started the war.
  In fact, over the last few weeks, President Trump has repeatedly 
pledged that the war would be resolved ``quickly''--a promise he has 
made and then broken many times.
  In fact, you may recall, colleagues, it was over a month ago that 
President Trump declared that we had won. He said: ``We won.''
  Well, if we won, what the hell are we doing there? And the reality is 
we haven't won anything. Negotiations to

[[Page S2154]]

end it are off again. Then they are on. Then they are off.
  Of course, a big part of these negotiations is about reopening the 
Strait of Hormuz, which was open the day before this war started. And 
now, reportedly, the President is preparing for an extended blockade of 
Iran, prolonging a conflict that has already driven up prices daily in 
the United States.
  We just saw that average gasoline prices have reached a 4-year high 
in the United States. He has also kept American servicemembers deployed 
overseas for recordbreaking periods and expended a huge amount of 
munitions, creating shortages in our supplies elsewhere.
  So what is the plan? What is the plan? Just to pursue an open-ended 
blockade, costing taxpayers billions of dollars--in fact, $1 billion a 
day--and further jeopardizing the global economy, offering no clear 
path to ending the war?
  Sometimes, President Trump says that this war was to prevent Iran 
from getting a nuclear weapon. Well, this is the President who tore up 
the Iran nuclear deal, or JCPOA, that was negotiated by President 
Obama, which kept Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and had probably 
the most intrusive inspection regime in arms control history.
  And last year, before President Trump started this war, his own DNI 
said that Iran was not pursuing a nuclear weapon. And, of course, after 
the military operations, in June of last year, against Iran's nuclear 
program, President Trump told the country that Iran's nuclear program 
was ``obliterated.''
  I also think it is worth reminding people what Citizen Trump said 
back in 2011 because it is revealing as to the President's mindset. We 
know that this President often engages in projection. Here is what he 
said, back in 2011, about then-President Obama. He said:

       Our President will start a war with Iran because he has 
     absolutely no ability to negotiate. He's weak and he's 
     ineffective. So the only way he figures that he's going to 
     get reelected--and as sure as you're sitting there--is to 
     start a war with Iran.

  Citizen Trump back in 2011 about President Obama.
  Well, President Obama negotiated an agreement to prevent Iran from 
obtaining a nuclear weapon. President Trump, in his first term, tore it 
up.
  But here is Donald Trump, essentially telling us what he thinks. 
Obviously, Donald Trump couldn't negotiate a deal with Iran, and so he 
started a war with Iran, exactly what he was claiming that President 
Obama would do, because he claimed President Obama didn't have the 
skills to negotiate an agreement to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear 
weapon.
  So here we are. Just to recap, the President started a war to stop 
what he had called an ``obliterated'' nuclear program and to reopen an 
international waterway that was open before he started the war. And 
since he started this war, along with Prime Minister Netanyahu, the 
justifications have been inconsistent and ever-changing, zigzagging 
here and there.
  But the results are clear, which is that President Trump has led this 
country into a complete strategic mess, with no end in sight, and ever-
rising costs that Americans have to bear, both in tax dollars expended 
and in higher prices at the pump and elsewhere.
  And the reason for so many weeks that this administration refused to 
have one of their decisionmakers testify in front of Congress was 
because what he heard behind closed doors revealed that there was no 
plan and no endgame.
  Now, in the last 2 days, we are hearing, finally, from Secretary 
Hegseth, and the American people can see in plain view that they have 
no plan. And yet this is the Secretary of the administration that is 
now asking this Congress to provide a $1.5 trillion defense budget.
  They just want to blow the roof off of the budget. And, of course, 
this is a Pentagon and Defense Department that have been unable to meet 
an audit.
  So what are we going to do at this point? We have got $25 billion 
gone. In fact, many people think that is a lowball estimate. But the 
reality is that we could put that money to much better use.
  We could use it to help our fellow Americans. But, no, Donald Trump 
said: We can't do that. We don't have the resources for that because we 
need the resources for this war--a war he said he would never start. In 
fact, what he said is--and I am quoting:

       It's not possible for us to take care of day care, [and] 
     Medicaid, [and] Medicare, all these individual things 
     [because] we're fighting wars.

  The wars he said he would never start.
  Well, maybe higher gas prices don't matter much to President Trump 
and his billionaire buddies and the biggest billionaire Cabinet in 
American history by far. Maybe they don't care about higher gas prices. 
But, I can tell you, Americans who are going to fuel their cars at the 
pump, they care. They are the ones bearing the burden here in America 
of this illegal Trump war.
  And we also know that we are burning through our munitions at a very 
rapid rate, munitions that should have been reserved for real national 
emergencies that we might face elsewhere in the world.
  We also heard something very disturbing again from Secretary Hegseth, 
when he testified in the House yesterday, which is his utter contempt--
his utter contempt--for the guardrails we put in place to prevent 
civilian harm in war. That is why I led nearly the entire Democratic 
caucus, a few weeks ago, in demanding answers and accountability on the 
U.S. airstrike that hit an elementary school in Iran, killing over 175 
people, most of them children.
  But Secretary Hegseth, he is dismissive of all of these concerns. In 
fact, he said that the rules of engagement were ``stupid''--rules 
designed to prevent innocent people from getting killed in war.
  He should never have been nominated. He should never have been 
confirmed, and he should be relieved of duty today.
  And how can we trust an administration with additional funds when 
they so brazenly say they don't want to comply with rules designed to 
prevent civilian harm which, in the long run, are also designed to help 
protect the lives of our troops?
  And yet they are asking for more money and more resources, and all 
without any congressional authorization to go into this war.
  Now, I want to just say something about the War Powers Resolution 
here because, as I cited at the top of my remarks, we are now 60 days 
into this war, yesterday, or if we accept the administration's 
interpretation, tomorrow--60 days.
  Now, under the War Powers Resolution, the President doesn't have the 
authority to start a war and fight a war for 2 days, 3 days, 4 days--
let alone 60 days. But that is what President Trump and Prime Minister 
Netanyahu did. They started the war.
  The idea behind the War Powers Resolution is, if the United States 
faces an imminent threat that requires the President to engage in 
hostilities overseas, that we will have a clock to make sure that 
Congress, as representatives of the American people and given the power 
in the Constitution to declare war, has time to consider and debate. 
And it says you have 60 days, even if you are fighting a war that 
somebody else started.
  So we are hearing that the Trump administration--the President--may 
exercise the ability under the War Powers Resolution for another 30 
days, on top of the 60 days. So that gives you 90 days.
  But here is the thing. The War Powers Resolution is very clear. That 
additional 30 days is not to ramp up a war. It is to ramp down a war. 
It is to bring American troops who are in hostility safely home. And 
yet here we are, around the 60th day, and President Trump, reportedly, 
is contemplating upping the tempo of the war, increasing strikes 
against Iran.
  That is a gross violation even of my Republican Senate colleagues' 
interpretation of the War Powers Act. Are they going to sit here and 
say nothing and do nothing while the President blatantly violates the 
War Powers Resolution? So far, they have been silent as he violated the 
constitutional requirement that only the Congress can declare war.
  But even if you adopt the world view that some of my Senate 
colleagues have expressed, the plain reading of the War Powers 
Resolution says: The next 30 days have to be used to wind down 
hostilities.

[[Page S2155]]

  Now, I understand that Secretary Hegseth, today, in the Armed 
Services Committee here in the Senate, said: Well, we are now in a 
cease-fire. So the clock was paused. It is not ticking.
  What a pile of nonsense. Here we have a full-on blockade, which we 
know is an active war, and the Secretary of Defense, who clearly just 
makes things up as he goes, is arguing that that somehow paused the 
statute.
  I hope my Republican Senate colleagues have the self-respect not to 
buy into that ridiculous interpretation of the law. But that is 
apparently the lie that the Secretary of Defense is trying to 
perpetrate as we speak.
  So let's be honest with the American people. We have a situation 
where the President, along with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, 
started a war against Iran. There was no imminent threat. They started 
it, and they did it without any congressional authorization.
  In fact, our colleagues here won't put forward a resolution to 
authorize the use of force. It would be great to see people take that 
kind of accountability. If you support the President's action, put 
forward an authorization for the use of military force--not a peep 
about that.
  But now, we have an actual statute that has already passed, the War 
Powers Resolution, which even the interpretation of Senate Republicans 
requires the President of the United States to spend the next 30 days 
winding down this war, not stepping up this war.
  So really, colleagues, you should level with the American people. We 
have a President who promised to keep us out of wars. We have a 
President who said he was going to bring down prices.
  He has done the exact opposite. He started wars. Prices are going up. 
Americans have been killed. Americans have been wounded. Thousands of 
civilians have been killed, thousands more wounded. And we are less 
safe and worse off.
  When you are digging a hole, stop digging.
  Vote for this War Powers Resolution, and let's put an end to this 
illegal war.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I want to thank Senator Schiff for 
bringing another War Powers Resolution before this body. I have lost 
count on how many votes we have had, but we are doing this for one 
reason and one reason only: The Republican majority refuses to do its 
constitutional and statutory responsibility.
  The Constitution says we declare war. The President doesn't get to 
make war without the consent of Congress, and our Founders were very 
intentional, investing that power in us. They did not want an 
unchecked, runaway Executive being able to make war overseas without 
the consent of the people.
  And I hear in Senator Van Hollen's voice his anger. I think we all 
are angry that our colleagues are not allowing this body to do its job, 
but we are also angry that the cost of this war is not being borne by 
Members of the U.S. Senate, is not being borne by Donald Trump's 
billionaire and corporate friends; the cost of this war is being borne 
by American consumers, by American small businesses, by American 
farmers.
  And so I just want to spend my few minutes updating you on what the 
state of the American economy and what the state of the global 
economy--inextricably linked to the American economy--is today, 60 days 
after this illegal war began.
  The scoreboard is gas prices. Americans today are paying, on average, 
about $4.30 a gallon. Gas prices are up 20 to 30 percent from the 
beginning of the war. The price of Brent crude is now over $120 a 
barrel compared to $70 before the war.
  The only reason the gas prices have gone up by 20 to 30 percent is 
the war. That is the only reason that Americans are paying those 
extraordinary amounts at the pump.
  And let's put this in real terms. If you are a commuter in this 
country who has a longer than average commute, you are probably buying 
somewhere short of a thousand gallons a year in auto fuel. And so when 
the price jumps by $1--and it may soon jump by $2--that is $1,000 to 
$2,000 out of your pocket.
  Forty percent of American families are living paycheck to paycheck. 
Forty percent of American families have less than $400 in the bank in 
liquid assets ready to spend on an emergency like a car repair or an 
emergency medical bill. And so when you are spending a thousand dollars 
more every year just to fill up your tank, you go from being on the 
brink of financial crisis into financial crisis.
  And, again, this isn't bad luck. This isn't a natural disaster. 
Donald Trump chose to increase gas prices in this country to $4.30 a 
gallon. Diesel prices are up even more. Diesel prices are up 50 
percent. This is the fuel that America's farmers and America's trucking 
industry uses. And our farmers were already dealing with the 
consequences of tariffs. Seventy percent of farmers right now in this 
country say that they will not have enough money in order to plant the 
next crop because the tariffs and the diesel prices are putting many of 
them out of business. Bankruptcies of farms are up almost 50 percent 
from before when Trump was President.
  Inflation was 2.8 percent before the war, well above the Federal 
Reserve's target. It is now 3.5 percent. That is an extraordinary 
increase, largely driven by fuel costs, but the cost of everything 
else--cost increases for everything else are coming very soon as well.
  Airfare prices, up by 25 percent. So if you are online right now 
looking to book a ticket for your family's vacation, if you are 
planning far ahead and booking tickets for Thanksgiving or Christmas, 
you are paying 25 percent more than you would have paid before the war. 
Reason for higher airline prices? The war.
  But this crisis is spiraling around the world because oil, $120 a 
barrel, is what fuels our fabrics and clothing industry globally. So 
the cost of polyester and nylon is going up and up and up. And so in 
the sewing hubs of Bangladesh and other countries that send products to 
Walmart, where a lot of Americans buy their clothes, we are starting to 
see production interruptions because of the high price--increasingly 
high price--of the components of fabrics.
  In Singapore and Taiwan, it is becoming more expensive for companies 
to produce medical devices like syringes and catheters because of the 
high, increasing price of plastic. Aluminum prices have been rising 
ever since the war in the Middle East started because of attacks on 
aluminum smelters in Iran and other Gulf countries. Helium, a product 
that is produced in the Middle East, the price is going through the 
roof, and so the semiconductor manufacturing industry globally is 
facing shortages because helium is an important product for 
semiconductors.
  So it is not just gas prices. You are about to see a spike in the 
cost of technological products, automobiles, fabrics, clothing, medical 
devices. Everything is getting more expensive because of one person's 
insane decision. No President, Republican or Democrat, prior to Donald 
Trump made the decision to invade Iran, to launch a full-scale war 
against Iran, because they were told the consequence of doing that is 
the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and there is no military response 
by the United States that will reopen the strait.
  And so every President prior to Donald Trump, whether they were 
Republican or Democrat, decided not to wage a full-scale war on Iran 
because they knew one of the consequences would be the meltdown of the 
American economy and the meltdown of the global economy. And it would 
not be billionaires and big corporations that would pay the price. It 
would be regular Americans, regular minimum-wage Americans, middle-
class Americans who would pay that price.
  And so as we head into the summer and the price of everything for 
American consumers gets higher and higher--their summer travel, their 
plane tickets, their clothing, their groceries--there is only one 
person to blame: Donald Trump. And there is only one party to blame: 
the Republican Party, which could choose to join us and vote for one of 
these resolutions to end the war, to allow us to get back to a point 
where prices are coming down instead of spiraling upward. This is a 
choice that our Senate Republican colleagues make every week, to vote

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for continuing this war and for continuing this disastrous price 
escalation on ordinary Americans.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.
  Ms. BALDWIN. Mr. President, I rise today on behalf of the American 
people who are against Donald Trump's illegal war with Iran. This war 
has taken the lives of 13 servicemembers--hundreds more are injured, 
many severely. This war has cost American taxpayers upward of $25 
billion and is jacking up the cost of energy, fuel, and fertilizer for 
Wisconsin families and farmers.
  I have been clear since this conflict began 2 months ago: President 
Trump did not have the authority to start this war with Iran. We were 
not under attack from Iran. We were not under imminent threat of an 
attack from Iran. Therefore, President Trump was required to ask 
Congress, the people's branch, for authorization.
  The Trump administration should have made the case to us and to the 
American people for why an all-out war with Iran was worth it. But the 
Trump administration did not follow the law. Donald Trump dragged the 
United States into a war of choice without a clear explanation.
  It happened without open hearings or public debates or a timeline. He 
started a war with Iran without a clear reason or plan to get us out. 
That is why we are still at war 2 months later.
  The Trump administration keeps saying that this will not be another 
endless war, but this administration still hasn't committed to a 
timeline for getting us out.
  I have watched my Republican colleagues bend over backward to explain 
why they have abdicated their duty to be a check on President Trump, 
but even if this war of choice was allowed under law, Congress still 
has to play a role.
  I wholeheartedly disagree with my Republican colleagues who said 
Trump could wage this war for 60 days without getting Congress' 
approval. But regardless, that clock that they just set up has run out. 
We are coming up on 60 days since the President notified Congress of 
military action in Iran. And as Republicans keep telling me, that 
deadline matters. On the 60-day mark, President Trump must cease 
military action or receive congressional authorization. My Republican 
colleagues know this. They have said as much, calling this deadline a 
``big deal'' and a ``trigger'' that requires Congress to act.
  So here is Republicans' chance to act. You said the President had 60 
days to wage a war and that he needed Congress to sign off? Well, it 
has been 60 days. It is time to do your constitutional duty to rein in 
this President and stop this illegal war that is jacking up Americans' 
costs while accomplishing next to nothing.
  Iran still has nuclear materials. They still have ballistic missiles 
and drones to attack us, a blockade on the Strait of Hormuz, and the 
same oppressive regime in place. It is time to show the American people 
where you stand on this war. Join us in forcing the Trump 
administration to come to Congress, to explain to the American people 
why we are at war, and make their case for why this war should 
continue.
  If they can't, then we shouldn't be at war, period.
  I yield the floor.
  (Mrs. MOODY assumed the chair.)
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Hagerty). The Senator from California.

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