New: Democrats are reluctant to embrace their most bare-knuckled tool to prevent President Donald Trump from launching further military operations against Venezuela or other nations.
Instead of threatening to hold up or even block government funding bills, Democrats are opting for a vote on a war powers resolution that, while politically significant, will be largely symbolic.
Lawmakers are staring down a Jan. 30 deadline to fund defense and diplomatic programs or face a partial government shutdown. Some Democrats want to use that must-pass legislation to demand language curtailing future military action against Venezuela or elsewhere.
But those Democrats are decidedly in the minority, with many more — even those most ardently opposed to Trump’s foreign policy moves — fearful that it’ll unravel the already-delicate funding process.
“That seems a bit like a fool’s errand,” Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) said of trying to use the appropriations process to block Trump. “What’s the likelihood that we would get approval of that?”
“I think what we need to do is to focus on getting the appropriations bills passed,” added Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee. “We’re on a good track with getting the appropriations bills done. And that’s what we keep our focus on.”
Democratic senators insist that Thursday’s vote on Sen. Tim Kaine’s (D-Va.) war powers resolution is their best avenue to push back against Trump’s newfound military adventurism.
“If we have a war powers vote, I’m not sure we need a second one related to it,” added Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), who will be the next party whip and is the top Democrat on the State Department funding panel. “We’re gonna get a war powers resolution, and that’s more on-point.”
This dynamic is a reflection of a few distinct realities on Capitol Hill.
The first is that Democrats really don’t want to flirt with another shutdown — over Venezuela or anything else. Democrats instigated the longest shutdown in U.S. history last year over health care, but they ended up folding without securing their initial demands.
The other is that Congress has so dramatically abdicated its authority over the use of military force. This has been a decades-long trend spanning presidential administrations of both parties, resulting in an executive branch that’s increasingly emboldened to do what it wants first and then tell Congress later.
But the latter is exactly why some Democrats feel so strongly about pulling every possible lever to rein in Trump’s warmaking powers.
“What are we here for, as Democrats, if not to try to use the appropriations process to stop disasters from happening?” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), an appropriator. “If there is any chance of an invasion or a long-term occupation of Venezuela, of course we should be arguing for a rider in the appropriations process to stop that.”
However, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said he wants to prioritize the war powers effort.
“If we can pass that — and it only needs two more votes, it got two Republican votes last time — all future action that they do in Venezuela could stop,” Schumer said on Tuesday. “That’s our number one focus. That’s the best thing to do right now.”
Schumer is right that Democrats only need a handful of Republicans to join them in order to pass Kaine’s war powers resolution, which only requires a simple majority. Prior efforts have come up just short. But even if Kaine’s measure passes, it would largely be a symbolic rebuke.
That’s because even if the House passes the resolution, Trump would veto it, and there wouldn’t be nearly enough votes to reach the two-thirds threshold to override the veto.
That’s not to say there isn’t any value for Democrats in forcing these votes, which Kaine says he intends to pursue for Greenland, Cuba, Colombia and others. Trump has mused about using military force against all of these nations and territories in the days since the president ordered an operation that captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
“There’s no reason for this to delay appropriations unless people are afraid to go on record and vote on whether or not they support military funding for a war in Venezuela,” Kaine said.
Indeed, Kaine’s Venezuela effort could pass on Thursday. Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) backed a previous war powers resolution centered on the boat strikes, and other Republicans could join them.
Many Republicans have been waiting to comment on Trump’s Venezuela move until after today’s Senate-wide briefing with top administration officials. This includes GOP senators who have sometimes been amenable to previous war powers efforts.
“We’ve taken pretty decisive action, and now the question is, what’s that going to lead to? What’s the next step? And I just don’t know the answers to that. I have a lot of questions,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said, adding that he believes U.S. boots on the ground in Venezuela or Greenland or elsewhere would require congressional authorization.
Power of the purse. Other Democrats are sympathetic to Murphy’s position. Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) supports pressing the issue as part of the appropriations process. Gallego has an amendment to the defense bill aimed at preventing a U.S. military takeover of Greenland.
“At what point are the Republicans going to say Trump has gone too far?” asked Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), who’s also aligned with Murphy. “At what point are the Republicans saying we’ve got to stop ceding our constitutional responsibility to the executive? We haven’t reached that limit yet, and it’s pretty shocking.”
Republicans believe they’ll be able to move past the Democratic effort, arguing the impetus for policy riders tied to current events pops up annually.
“If it wasn’t Venezuela, it’d be something else,” Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), a senior Appropriator, said. “We’re used to it.”
