IL-06/IL-14: Sean Casten & Lauren Underwood Support Resolution on Iran

Sean Casten
Lauren Underwood

The 224-194 nearly party line vote attempts to stop President Trump under War Powers Resolution

On Thursday afternoon, the House of Representatives passed the Democratic-led attempt to prevent President Trump from using hostile military action against Iran.

The resolution was due to the result of the administration of justice on Iran’s General Qassem Soleimani last week.

The House Concurrent Resolution 83 (HConRes83) was approved by the House by a nearly party line 224-194 vote, with 8 Democrats voting against it and 3 Republicans voting in favor.

HConRes83 is sponsored by Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin (D, MI) and had 134 cosponsors. Congressman Sean Casten was a cosponsor, while Congresswoman Lauren Underwood was not. Both Casten and Underwood voted in favor.

The voting grid from California Target Book is below to view the names of members voting their resepective ways:

The concurrent resolution faces an uncertain future in the Senate.

The arguments for and against are quite predictable. Casten sent out a 5-part tweet yesterday after the vote on the resolution, which is transcribed below:

“United States civilians both home and abroad and our brave servicemembers need to have confidence that their government, particularly the Executive Branch, has a clear, comprehensive strategy.

“President Trump’s decision to launch the strike without consulting Congress was reckless and yesterday’s classified briefing failed to provide a substantial strategy.

“Ensuring Congress’ constitutional check on the President’s war-making power is a safeguard to ensure that we’re not sending our armed forces into needless conflicts & Americans’ confidence that these important decisions are made in Congress, not in dark rooms at Mar-a-Lago.

“Unilaterally invoking war is no way to govern and risks the safety of all Americans. That’s why I voted for the War Powers Resolution to limit the President’s military actions regarding Iran.

“The American people deserve a complete strategy from this Administration and Congress has a constitutional obligation to ensure this Administration cannot enter a catastrophic conflict with Iran.”

Congressman Sean Casten tweets 1/9/20
.

Here is Congressman Dan Crenshaw’s address to the House opposing the resolution:

Underwood did not tweet or issue a press release on the War Powers concurrent resolution.

External Links:


Comments

IL-06/IL-14: Sean Casten & Lauren Underwood Support Resolution on Iran — 14 Comments

  1. Concurrent resolutions are not sent to the President, and have no force of law.

    The House could have just as usefully spent its time selecting the official hemorrhoidal suppository of the U.S. government.

  2. Here is a Republican Senator from the ruby red state of Utah blasting the Trump Administration’s classified briefing.

    The only thing more amazing than a Republican senator blasting a Republican president this badly on something so fundamentally important to our country is the fact that Fox News just cut away mid rant.

    What in two world could Niel Cavvuto have said that was more newsworthy?

    Incredible cut away.

    Incredible rant against Trumps pathetic team.

    https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1215023938532712450?s=12

  3. Yea!!

    And If that ly’in SOB Johnson drops one more bomb on Hanoi, I’m gonna drop some acid and buy a VW Bus.

  4. Re part of resolution:

    “President Trump’s decision to launch the strike without consulting Congress was reckless and yesterday’s classified briefing failed to provide a substantial strategy.”

    Perhaps Trump could have, maybe he did, consult with Congress on this matter but in a very limited way. That would be with ONLY two Republican leaders (McConnell, McCarthy) he could trust. Not a single Democrat could have been trusted to not leak the impending strike to the mostly enemy left wing media which is joined at the hip with the Democrat Party.

    Given the rabid hatred of Trump by the vast majority of Democrats, it would have been reckless of Trump to tell any of them. Their Democrat Party has been trying to get rid of him since the election campaign of 2016 with plots such as the phony Russia collusion charges.

    Incidentally, President Barak Hussein Obama authorized 563 drone strikes in nations such as Somalia, Yemen and Pockyston wherein an estimated 400-800 innocent civilians were killed.

  5. Under-hood needs a bath.

    But I do agree all the wars since WWII have been unconstitutional as they were never declared by Congress.

  6. Russsia, Stormy, Taxes, Recount, Ukraine, Impeachment, now Terrorist killer as the latest “GET TRUMP” initiative from this bunch.

    My God do they ever do the Peoples work for whom the represent, or just huddle together and snicker about the next topic to devote to getting a duly elected Leader of our Country?

    Were they all dodgeball victims in Junior High and this is all a payback to the Jocks and big mouths who “picked on them”?

    Never seen a more whiny and whimpy bunch of males,females and “other” in a lifetime.

  7. How did these 2 idiots ever get elected???

    Certainly, not by an informed electorate.

  8. Most votes win Jim.

    It’s the crazy concept that was not used to elect Trump.

  9. Just a little legal background.

    “The British model gave the king the absolute power to make war. The American framers repudiated that form of government because their study of history convinced them that executives go to war not for the national interest but to satisfy personal desires of glory, ambition, and fame. The resulting military adventures were disastrous to their countries, both in lives lost and treasures squandered. I have submitted to your subcommittee a number of my recent articles that elaborate on the lessons drawn from that history. (E.g., Louis Fisher, ‘Lost Constitutional Moorings: Recovering the War Power,’ 81 Ind. L. J. 1199 (2006); Louis Fisher, ‘Domestic Commander in Chief: Early Checks by Other Branches,’ 29 Cardozo L.Rev. 961 (2008); Louis Fisher, ‘To War or Not to War: That is Still the Question for Congress, not the President,’ Legal Times, March 10, 2008, at 44-45.)

    “At the Philadelphia Convention, only one delegate (Pierce Butler of South Carolina) was prepared to give the President the power to make war. He argued that the President ‘will have all the requisite qualities, and will not make war but when the Nation will support it.’ Roger Sherman, a delegate from Connecticut, objected: ‘The Executive shd. be able to repel but not to commence war.’ Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts said he ‘never expected to hear in a republic a motion to empower the Executive alone to declare war.’ George Mason of Virginia spoke “agst giving the power of war to the Executive, because not [safely] to be trusted with it; . . . He was for clogging rather than facilitating war.’ (2 Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, at 318-19 (Max Farrand ed. 1937).”

    Accordingly, in Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 (sometimes referred to as the War Powers Clause) the Constitution expressly vests in Congress the sole power to declare war.

    “[The Congress shall have Power …] To declare War, . . . .”

    This authority is not trumped by the fact that under the Constitution the President is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the United States, otherwise, the foregoing express vesting (not to mention the predominant views of the Founders) would be nullified.

    “The debates at the Philadelphia Convention and the state ratification conventions underscore the principle that the President had certain defensive powers to repel sudden attacks but anything of an offensive nature (taking the country from a state of peace to a state of war) was reserved to Congress. That understanding prevailed from 1789 to 1950, when President Harry Truman went to war against North Korea without ever coming to Congress.”
    (Louis Fisher, “War Powers for the 21st Century: The Constitutional Perspective”, (statement presented in appearance before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, April 10, 2008) (available at http://loc.gov/law/help/usconlaw/pdf/war-fa-2008.pdf; last accessed on January 10, 2020).

    From the middle of the last century on, Congress has increasingly empowered the Executive to initiate offensive military actions. But such abrogation, as it were, was and is, constitutionally, at the discretion of Congress. What Congress gives it can take away.

  10. The two people in the title do indeed get elected by an “informed electorate”. Informed by a Pravda/Tass style mostly left wing and biased media that has been and is in the tank for the Democrat party.

    Young people in Russia seeking a career with the media there and the communist party would do well to come to the U.S. for a few years to learn how to propagandize and snow-job the public.

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