Casten Votes to End Trump’s War with Iran
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Congressman Sean Casten (IL-06) voted for House Concurrent Resolution 38, a bipartisan War Powers Resolution to prohibit the Trump Administration’s hostilities against Iran, and released the following statement:
“The president started a war without a plan, clear endgame, legal justification, or congressional authorization. American service members and innocent civilian lives have been lost because of the president’s actions. He has done everything he can to plunge the region into dangerous instability and drag the United States into another open-ended conflict.
“This war has already cost the American people billions of dollars and comes in the wake of the Trump Administration’s unauthorized spending cuts to programs that actually benefit Americans. He has violated our power of the purse and prioritized chaos in Iran over making life better for Americans at home.
“Neither the Constitution nor the War Powers Act allows the president to start a war. That authority rests solely with Congress. As recently as yesterday, the president himself called this a war. As did his Secretary of Defense.
“In order for the president to engage in hostilities against another country without congressional authorization, he must demonstrate there is an imminent threat to the United States. In the weeks leading up to the strikes, as the president moved US troops into the region, he did not make the case for an imminent threat. In the days since the attack, he has not shown that there is an imminent threat. The word “imminent” does not even appear once in the Administration’s War Powers notification to Congress.
“Instead, the president and his administration have provided questionable reasoning for their actions that are on shaky legal grounds. They have obfuscated, backtracked, contradicted, and embarrassed themselves. No one in the White House is quite sure why they bombed another country. They only know that Donald Trump’s ego told them to.
“Our Constitution is clear: our sons and daughters should not be sent into harm’s way without debate and authorization by the people’s representatives in Congress. While Iran’s regime is repressive and destabilizing, that does not justify unauthorized military strikes. That is why I voted to stop the Trump Administration’s hostilities against Iran.”
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