Floor Statements

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President. I rise today to recognize May 11 to May 17, 2026, as National Salvation Army Week.

Founded in 1865, the Salvation Army has been unfailingly committed to serving those in need without discrimination. For more than 150 years, the Salvation Army has provided essential social services, including disaster relief, food assistance, shelter, rehabilitation programs, and youth development initiatives in local communities across the United States.

The Salvation Army serves more than 27 million Americans annually, offering compassion, hope, and support to the most vulnerable populations, including individuals experiencing homelessness, veterans, seniors, human trafficking survivors, and those recovering from addiction. Across the Nation, the Salvation Army operates shelters, food pantries, job training programs, and emergency disaster relief efforts that strengthen communities and improve lives.

The Salvation Army continues to be a trusted partner at the local, State, and Federal levels, providing critical services that address poverty, hunger, and natural disasters. Volunteers, donors, and officers of the Salvation Army exemplify the spirit of service, working tirelessly to provide relief and opportunity for those in need--and should be recognized and commended for their commitment to the betterment of others.

I am grateful for the work that the Salvation Army accomplishes every day and applaud its dedication to social service.

Mr. President, I appreciate my colleague and strongly support his resolution that will be voted on tomorrow, and I have taken the floor often on this topic and don't need to repeat things I have said before. But today, I guess what I want to say is basically this: The American public does not like being lied to by its government. Of course we don't but particularly on matters of war.

I am old enough to remember two tragic circumstances where the American public was lied to by their civilian leadership about war-- many lies were told by successive administrations, beginning with the Eisenhower administration and through Kennedy and Johnson in particular, about the Vietnam war--and how tragic it was when Americans realized that much of what they had been told that led, first, the United States to take over the French colonial project in Southeast Asia and then to engage in war--much of what they had been told was false.

When you are losing your sons and daughters--56,000 U.S. deaths in the Vietnam war--and then you find that the civilian leadership has been lying to you while troops have been serving honorably, it is incredibly embittering in a State like Virginia where there are so many military equities but to every State.

We were lied to about the war in Iraq. We were told that Iraq had something to do with 9/11. That was not

true. We were told that Iraq was pursuing nuclear weapons and had weapons of mass destruction they would use against the United States. That was not true. But those were put on the table before a vote in Congress to engage in a war that most now agree 25 years later was a massive, massive mistake.

So I come from a State that lost a lot of people in Iraq and Afghanistan and Vietnam, and I join my colleague today to support his resolution because I believe the United States is not being told the truth about the situation in Iran.

First, the administration worked very, very hard up until essentially a week or so ago to avoid any public hearings about the war in either the House or the Senate, in the committees that have jurisdiction over important matters. I mean, not to have a public hearing about a war?

Right now--and I am going to go into this in an Armed Services Committee hearing later in the week--the administration is not even willing to share the legal rationale, the opinion developed by the Office of Legal Counsel at the State Department. They are not even willing to share that rationale with Members of the U.S. Senate. They won't share it with members of the Intel Committee. They won't share it with members of the Armed Services Committee. They won't share it with members of the Foreign Relations Committee. They won't even share the legal rationale. What are they afraid of? That raises some natural suspicion.

In at least two instances, I believe the administration is not being truthful with the American public about this war. One was the assertion of a whole different series of rationales, but one of the rationales that seems to now be the one that they rely on is, well, of course the war is needed to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. No, it isn't. We had stopped Iran from getting a nuclear weapon by a diplomatic deal that Donald Trump chose to tear up, as my colleague just mentioned. That had stopped Iran's nuclear program.

That deal was a comprehensive deal that took months, even years, to negotiate. It contained some provisions that were time-limited--5 years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years--but it contained two provisions that were permanent. The first was on page 1 of the deal: that Iran will not seek to purchase or acquire or develop nuclear weapons. That was a permanent pledge by Iran. The second part of the deal that was permanent was Iran agreed to permanent inspections by the IAEA, including inspections according to an additional protocol that had been developed by the nations of the world after North Korea had cheated on a nuclear program earlier.

Those were permanent pledges by Iran to not pursue nuclear weapons and to allow intrusive inspections, and President Trump decided, over the objection of his Secretaries of State and Defense, to tear up the deal. So when President Trump says now: Well, we have to wage war; we have to subject our troops to being killed and being injured and billions of dollars of costs and Americans and people all over the world paying more for gas to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon-- that is a lie. Diplomacy had stopped them until President Trump tore it up.

To make matters worse, President Trump, with the United States, following a 12-day war of Israel against Iran to destroy their nuclear capacity, took additional action that the White House said had destroyed Iran's nuclear program.

So if we had controlled it first by diplomacy and then a year ago added on a war waged by Israel against Iran to obliterate the nuclear program, there was not a nuclear program that justified this war. There was no threat of any action anytime soon by Iran to develop nuclear weapons that justified this war.

I don't like to use this phrase. I don't use this phrase a lot: The White House has lied to the American public, and every time they say this war is justified to stop Iran's nuclear program, they are telling the American public a lie.

The second lie they are telling--and I will just say this and then hand it back to my colleague--is a different kind of a lie. If you state a set of facts that are true but you don't state the full set of facts, you are telling a lie. And I have heard President Trump and I have heard Secretary Hegseth say many times: We need to stop Iran because they have been a thorn in our side since 1979. They have been a thorn in our side for the last 47 years.

Our decision makers are acting as if the U.S.-Iran history started in 1979 when the Iranian people toppled their government and then, yes, in the aftermath of that toppling, started to say ``Death to America,'' ``Death to Israel.'' They act like that is the only history. My colleagues will recount Iranian misbehavior--taking over our Embassy, in violation of international law; funding proxies to attack the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut and other locations; funding proxies that attack U.S. troops who are in the region in or near Iran-- my colleagues will cite that information, and they will cite it accurately. And Iran has done a series of horrible things to their own people, to American positions, to other nations in the region. But my colleagues always ignore, the President always ignores, and Secretary Hegseth always ignores that history didn't start in 1979.

If you want to understand the history of this relationship between the United States and Iran, you have to go back to World War II when we were allies. There was a pivotal conference in the middle of World War II in Tehran in 1943 where the allies--the United States, the Soviet Union at the time, and Britain--guaranteed to Iran its sovereignty and its independence and its borders, and the Iranian people loved the United States, and we were allies.

Then in 1953, during the Eisenhower administration, the United States made a catastrophic mistake. There is a recent book by Scott Anderson called ``King of Kings'' that lays this out in clear and unmistakable detail. The United States decided we would topple the democratic Government of Iran. In 1953, the United States, through the CIA, engineered a coup. We toppled the democratic government. We installed the Shah, a dictator. We funded the secret police of the Shah, who tortured, exiled, imprisoned, and killed thousands of Iranians. And the United States basically put this puppet government--a dictator--over the Iranian people from 1953 until they finally tired of it, and they cast that government off in 1979.

Guess what. Twenty-six years of the United States funding a dictatorship killing and torturing Iranians led the new Government of Iran to be--drumroll--anti-United States. We turned Iranians from friends into enemies. We didn't have to do that, but we did it.

Secretary Hegseth and the President never mention that. They don't mention that after Iran overtook our Embassy, we funded Iraq to wage war on Iran. We gave Iraq funds. We gave Iraq intel. And in a 7- or 8- year war, Iraq--we funded Saddam Hussein to wage war against Iran. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians were killed, and they knew the United States was partially responsible for it.

In the late 1980s, a U.S. Navy vessel, the Vincennes, shot down an Iranian commercial aircraft, killing 290 civilians. It took us years to admit that we did it, but we eventually admitted that.

The United States invaded Iran's next-door neighbors to the east and west to topple their governments--Afghanistan and Iraq--and Iran believed: Well, you toppled our government in 1953. You are probably preparing to do it again.

In this recent war on Iran, we have wiped out their leadership, we have killed civilians, and we bombed a school, killing schoolgirls. Now, we all know that the United States does not intentionally decide to target schools. That is not what we do intentionally. But to an Iranian who watched the United States intentionally topple their government in 1953, intentionally participate in an assassination campaign against their leaders, shoot down a civilian aircraft in the late 1980s, intentionally fund Iraq to wage war against Iran--an Iranian will look at U.S. actions and say: Wait a minute. This is part of a pattern. We were friends until you decided to topple our government in 1953.

The point I am making about this is that if you are not willing to be honest about the history and acknowledge not

only Iranian misbehavior--which continues to this day. They just executed somebody in Iran--a student--in a gross violation of human rights. So you have to acknowledge that the Iranian regime has conducted all kinds of bad activities. But if you are not willing to acknowledge the role the United States has played in turning this nation that was a nation of allies into enemies, then you are going to get the policy wrong. You will get the policy wrong if you don't acknowledge the truth.

What is that truth? as I finish. The truth is, if more war between the United States and Iran would bring a solution to any of these problems, then we would have found the answer at some point between 1953 and now. We have had a back-and-forth going between the United States and Iran since 1953, and it has not produced peace, it has not produced stability, and it has not produced anything for the good of the Iranian people or the American people, frankly. For us to think now that, you know what, more war, just a little more war would be the right thing to do to bring a better resolution to this painful 75-year chapter--it shows a profound ignorance of our history and a just shocking level of naivety.

So that is why I have joined with my colleagues every week to look this Senate in the eye and say: As a deliberative body with constitutional powers and an oath that we have taken to provide a check against an Executive--particularly on matters of war--we can't let this go under the radar screen, classified hearings only. We have to be as loud and consistent as can be to say that more war between the United States and Iran is not an answer to anything. It hasn't been an answer to anything since 1953, and it is not an answer to anything now. That is why I support this resolution.

We should not be at war without a vote of Congress. Even if there were such a vote--I would vote against it, but if it were to pass this body and be signed by the President, I would then drop my complaint that the war is illegal. I would say it is unwise, but I would be outvoted, as I am often on events, and thus it wouldn't be illegal.

It is an illegal war. It is an unwise war that demonstrates a profound lack of understanding of the deep, tragic history between the United States and Iran. And for that, to my colleague from Oregon, I strongly support your resolution.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to recognize Mr. Richard Ritter, a true patriot who has dedicated more than 55 years of service to this country, first as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Air Force and later as a civil servant and Senior Executive Service leader with the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, and the Missile Defense Agency.

A native of New York City, Mr. Ritter graduated from Manhattan College with a degree in electrical engineering, earned a master of science from New York University, and entered Active Duty in 1971 as an engineering officer. Over a distinguished 27-year Air Force career, he served in a range of critical roles, including systems engineering, telecommunications leadership in Germany, and strategic analysis of command, control, and reconnaissance systems.

In 1990, Mr. Ritter was assigned to the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, later the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, where he led theater missile defense systems integration and battle management, command, control, and communications efforts across the Department of Defense and with allied partners. Following his military service, he continued this work as a civilian, serving in senior engineering and leadership roles responsible for system integration, interoperability, and architecture development for the Nation's missile defense programs.

At the Missile Defense Agency, Mr. Ritter served as deputy program manager and later program director for Command and Control, Battle Management, and Communications, C2BMC, where his leadership was instrumental in establishing a global, integrated network supporting the Missile Defense System. There, he helped build a system that integrates data from sensors across 19 time zones and in orbit, providing real-time situational awareness and coordination to combatant commanders. His direction to deliver enhanced command-and-control capabilities and critical system updates directly increased weapon system effectiveness and contributed to the operational success of the Missile Defense System, helping to strengthen the protection of the United States and its allies.

Mr. Ritter also played a key role in deploying forward-based radar systems and missile defense capabilities across Europe, the Indo- Pacific, and the Middle East, strengthening coordination with allies and expanding the reach of U.S. missile defense. His work advanced space-based sensing, communications, and tracking capabilities and supported the development of integrated, multi-domain missile defense architectures that remain vital to our national security.

Mr. Ritter's leadership and technical expertise have left an indelible mark on the Missile Defense Agency and on the Nation's defense. As he prepares for a well-earned retirement, I thank him for his commitment, perseverance, and dedication to the United States of America. I wish him the very best in the years ahead.

Mr. President, I rise to speak on a War Powers Resolution that will be called up for a vote in the 5 o'clock hour, I believe, and I expect a number of other colleagues might take the floor. This is a resolution that I filed together with Senators Gallego and Schiff, and it is like other resolutions that I have filed in recent weeks to challenge the President's authority to take the United States to war without a vote of Congress.

In this instance, this resolution deals with the country of Cuba. The United States has had a long, long history with Cuba that I needn't recount here, but suffice it to say, as a member of the Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees, I have never heard the suggestion that Cuba poses an imminent security threat to the United States, and I think it is an accepted fact that there is currently no war authorization passed by Congress that would authorize military actions against Cuba.

And so using the privileged provision of the War Powers Resolution, I have filed this, together with my colleagues, to say we should not be at war--we should not be engaged in hostilities with Cuba unless there is a congressional debate and vote.

My argument is that, under the terms of the resolution, we are already engaged in hostilities with Cuba because we are using American force--primarily the Coast Guard but other assets as well--to engage in a very devastating economic blockade of the nation. If anyone were doing to the United States what we are doing to Cuba, we would definitely consider it an act of war.

Let me describe what United States actions with respect to Cuba now mean to Cuban citizens. The blockade which went into effect and is using United States assets to block energy from being delivered to the island--because it does not have its own energy sources--has led to severe humanitarian crises across Cuba. Between January and March, nearly 100,000 scheduled surgical procedures were not carried out in hospitals in the country due to power limitations--power limitations brought on by the fuel blockade. More than 11,000 of these procedures were procedures that had been scheduled for children.

Hospitals in Cuba are facing a particularly severe shortage of fuel since Cuban hospitals are run by the Cuban Government and President Trump has focused on curtailing shipments of energy destined for governmental use, and that governmental use includes hospitals and other healthcare providers. There has been significant press reporting about the humanitarian impact of this energy blockade upon the healthcare sector and medical shortages in Cuba.

In addition to the canceling of hospital procedures, the shortage of energy and particularly the blocking of energy to the Cuban Government has meant the cutoff of running water in many urban areas because the water supply systems in Cuba rely upon electric pumps. More than a third of the Cuban population does not currently have access to clean water. Eighty-seven percent of the national water system's pumps rely on grid electricity to function. Trash has piled up because of lack of gas to run garbage trucks, and doctors say preventable deaths are rising as equipment fails, including the refrigeration that is necessary to maintain certain medications at appropriately low temperatures.

In Cuba, daily power cuts in urban and rural areas have been lasting between 12 and 20 hours and, in some cases, exceeding 48 to 72 hours. Cuba has experienced multiple national blackouts in the months of March and April. Cuba is a nation that is very rural, and these cuts fall particularly heavily upon rural Cuba.

In late March, the United States Coast Guard did allow a single Russian oil tanker carrying about 730,000 barrels of oil to pass through the blockade, providing Cuba with a few weeks of fuel. But in a country where the average monthly wage is about $15, gas is now nearly $40 a gallon. If you can find it, you probably can't afford it.

The blockade of energy also affects food prices. They have risen more than 13 percent. Restrictions in rural electrical supply are projected to cause a 40-percent reduction in short-cycle crop yields--crops like vegetables, beans, and potatoes. Cold chain disruption has led to significant rates of spoilage for perishable foods.

These are the kinds of things that happen when the United States decides, for no reason other than a desire to change the Cuban regime, that we will impose an energy blockade upon them. And again, if another country was doing this to the United States and causing the cancellation of medical procedures, especially for kids; the blackouts; the shutting down of municipality water supplies; and other significant challenges in the United States, we would consider it a hostility and even an act of war.

It is interesting that there has not yet been a clear justification for what the United States is doing to Cuba other than a desire to change its regime. There is no argument that they have nuclear weapons or a ballistic missile program. There is no argument that they pose an imminent threat to the United States.

Now, could we stand here and debate at some length and find some significant bipartisan support for the notion that the Cuban regime is a gross violator of human rights? I think we could. It has been a source of sadness that as the United States took some steps toward normalization of Cuba, that did not lead the Cuban Government to necessarily open up human rights or freedoms for its population. So, sure, we could have a debate about what we thought about the Cuban regime, but a desire to change the regime of another nation is not a sufficient reason for the United States to threaten and carry out military action that is devastating to the population.

So given that regime change should not be a reason for war unless it is debated upon and embraced by Congress--and if we were going to say the regime change of a bad regime is a reason for the United States to go to war, we would have an awful lot of countries in the world where we would be debating about going to war. But given that there isn't an imminent threat to the United States from Cuba, I am glad to join with my colleagues and call up this War Powers Resolution.

We just heard a powerful speech from King Charles III. We took the break to walk down to the House to hear the speech, and it was a powerful one. And one of the lines in the speech that got a lot of applause on all sides of the aisle--and I even noticed members of the President's own Cabinet standing to applaud a line--was his assertion that part of the origin of the American Declaration of Independence and the American independence project was to form a government whereby the legislature would have the power, as the article I branch, to stand up against overreaches by an Executive.

An overreaching Executive, even in matters of war, is not something that is new to the United States. It is not something that is partisan. Executives of both parties, Whigs and Federalists, before there were Democrats and Republicans, often attempted to overreach. But what the Framers put into

the Constitution and that constitutional command as expressed in the statute that allows a Member of Congress to offer a war powers resolution is that when there are efforts by an Executive to go too far, then it is up to Congress to stand up and provide a check against any overreach.

Abraham Lincoln, as a Congressperson, wrote a letter to his law partner grappling with this very issue, and he said the Framers of the Constitution were very focused on reducing what he called ``Kingly oppressions.'' And he said the most Kingly of all oppressions is the tendency of Executives to distract or impoverish their populations by taking them to war. And so, for that reason, we vested the question of war with the legislature.

And so given that there are underway hostilities against Cuba that are causing significant humanitarian crises among children and others, innocent civilians in Cuba, and given that there has been no congressional authorization of these hostilities, I ask my colleagues to do what we were just urged to do by King Charles III and, in the best tradition of American Government, stand for the proposition that the legislature should provide a check against an overreaching Executive.

Please vote in the affirmative on my resolution that we should not be engaged in hostilities or war with Cuba absent a congressional debate and vote.

With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am about to make a motion with respect to the War Powers Resolution, but I understand there will be a point of order offered that is not debatable. So I just want to say that my understanding is that the point of order will suggest that what is currently being engaged in, in Cuba, is not hostilities.

The War Powers Resolution clearly contemplates a resolution being within the contemplation of the body of hostilities that are ongoing or are imminent because Congress wanted an ability for Congress to stop a war before it started, and that was contemplated in the War Powers Resolution.

I would also point out that the United States is using force to block energy from going to Cuba, and that has led to the cancelation of 100,000 surgeries in hospitals, including 11,000 for children. It has led to massive power blackouts. It has led to the unavailability of clean water because water systems depend upon electric pumps.

My argument would be, if anyone were doing that to the United States and affecting our citizens in that way, we would certainly view that as hostilities that we would want to do everything we could to stop.

With that, Mr. President, pursuant to section 1013 of the Department of State Authorization Act for fiscal years 1984 and 1985--that is 50 U.S.C., section 1546(a)--and in accordance with section 601(b) of the International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act of 1976, I move to discharge the Committee on Foreign Relations from further consideration of S.J. Res. 124.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to yield back all remaining time.

Mr. President, I rise to support my colleague Senator Baldwin's War Powers Resolution. I have spoken on all of these resolutions now going back to the very beginning of the war. I will not be long. I thank my colleague for bringing this forward.

In just the news of today, one aspect of the war is the increasing fuel costs and its effect on the global economy. There have been three news items just in the last 3 hours.

First, Lufthansa Airlines is canceling thousands of flights because of increased fuel costs.

Second, the American airline Spirit Airlines is on the verge of bankruptcy, with the U.S. Government considering the need to bail out Spirit Airlines.

Finally, there has been an announcement within the last couple of hours by United Airlines--one of our largest carriers--that they believe they may have to increase airfares by up to 20 percent for some significant time into the future to recoup the costs of additional aviation fuel.

If you just think back to February 27, it seems like a long time ago now because so much has happened. Less than 2 months ago, oil prices were normal, the Strait of Hormuz was open, and commerce was happening. Then President Trump made the decision--without a rationale, without a plan, without consulting with allies, without consulting or seeking a vote of Congress--to enter the Nation into yet another war in the Middle East.

The entire world is suffering, but the suffering that matters the most to me is the suffering of Americans--the 13 families who have lost loved ones in an unnecessary war and the hundreds of our military members who have been injured and their lives forever altered going forward.

I want to say this to my colleagues: You made a really good point. This is a critical moment. We are in a cease-fire. It is actually easier to stop something when you are in a cease-fire.

If we could vote yes on this resolution and get it to the House, it could have the effect of extending the cease-fire so that we don't start bombing again.

We know the President has been going back and forth. He came within a few hours last night of ending the cease-fire, of calling for a renewing of the bombing that has killed civilians and that has dramatically damaged civilian infrastructure in Iran. Yet, at the very last minute, as he is prone to do, he changed his mind and said the cease-fire should be extended. I salute that.

For whatever the reason or however he is going to describe it, extending the cease-fire is the right thing to do because all of this gets harder when bombs start falling again. The regime's backbone gets stiffer and stiffer. Their desire to retaliate grows stronger and stronger. The chaos in the region escalates the threat to American troops. It escalates. This all gets harder if bombs start falling again.

So while we are in the moment of a cease-fire that is fragile and that may not be counted upon to last for very long, if we could pass Senator Baldwin's resolution, we would send the strong message that Congress wants the pause. We want the pause. We don't want this war to pick up again unless or until we have the debate and the vote that the Constitution requires. That would be the right thing to have happen. That would be respecting our troops.

I will conclude and just say this: After nearly 14 years on the Armed Services Committee representing one of the most military States in the country and thinking as a military dad ``What is it that we owe our troops?'' we owe our troops the resources that they need.

My colleagues and I on both sides of the aisle every year pass the Defense authorizing bill. It is the only bill that we have passed every year for 63, 64 years in a row. This is something for which, in a bipartisan way, we join together to make sure that our troops have the resources they need. That is the first thing we owe them.

The second thing we owe our troops is respect, and that is why so many of us on both sides of the aisle go out of our way, as we are traveling around our States, to spend time with our military families and to thank those who serve. When we have the opportunity during recess, we travel around the world to see our troops in harm's way. We look them in the eye and thank them for the sacrifices they make.

But I would argue that an even more important way to respect our troops--even more than the resources we provide and the thanks we offer--is to not use them for missions that are not worth their risking their lives for. Let's not use them for stupid reasons. Let's use them for good reasons--when war is the last resort that must occur in order to protect America. At that point, our troops who have signed up have volunteered for a mission that they know might be dangerous, and yes, we should deploy them in those circumstances. But when we use troops foolishly, as we often have during my lifetime--in Vietnam and in Iraq, where they served bravely, but in a way, they were betrayed by poor civilian decisionmaking--that is the cardinal form of disrespect to our troops.

The way we use them in the right way is by having this kind of a debate about whether a mission is in the national interest before we send them in to risk their lives.

Senator Baldwin's motion at this moment when we are at a cease-fire gives us a chance to step back, have that debate, and have that vote. In full view of the American people, those who want to make the case that this war is worth it should be able to make that case, and those of us who don't believe it is worth it should make that case. Then we would have a vote, and the answer would be in accord with the process set out by the Framers of our Constitution.

If the will of Congress is that we should go to war, I might disagree with it, but I would argue that it was done lawfully, just as our Framers demanded, but if, as I imagine, the full debate and vote in these bodies does not provide sufficient votes to authorize the war, how dare we keep asking our troops to risk their lives for something we are unwilling to vote for.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise in support of my colleague's War Powers Resolution.

I am proud to be a cosponsor with Senator Duckworth, and I am very humbled to be here in the Chamber and listen to her--to listen to her recount her own experience as to her own vow as a Member of this body and to take the very painful lesson that she absorbed when her future was completely altered by her wartime service and put it to a positive use in trying to protect others like her.

Senator Duckworth proves a point that gets proven over and over and over again: that our military serves with distinction and bravery and that they serve with professionalism and excellence. But so often, the issue for them is the quality of the civilian decisions about whether they go to war or not. So often in my lifetime--in Vietnam and Iraq and now in Iran--that brave service was compromised--really, betrayed--by poor civilian decision making and for improper political reasons, rather than a careful assessment of what was in America's best interests.

I have been asking the question since this war began: Have we learned nothing from 25 years of war--unproductive war--in the Middle East?

It is pretty apparent to me, in having asked that question over and over again, that this administration has not.

This administration has not factored in the 14,000-plus deaths in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have not factored in the more than 65,000 American troops and contractors who were injured. They have not factored in the hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. They have not factored in the fact that the U.S. military engagements did not produce a safer region. They have not factored in the $8 trillion spent during those 25 years. They have acted as if that history is now wiped away, and we can engage in a war in the Middle East without reflecting upon these lessons that are written in blood and in the precious resources of our Nation.

So I am not going to ask the question again today, ``Have we learned nothing from 25 years of war?'' because I think the answer to that, sadly, is plain.

So let me ask a different question: What have we learned in 45 days of war in Iran? What have we learned?

I would argue that we have learned at least three things: War is costly. An unwise war is deeply unpopular. Those who would make diplomacy impossible

make war inevitable. I think those are the lessons that the last 45 days have taught us.

First, war is costly.

As my colleague laid out, 13 members of our armed services--one who lived in Spotsylvania County, VA, who had purchased a home, who was within a few months of retirement and was wanting to retire to that home with his family--have died. Spouses and kids and parents and friends and brothers and sisters are mourning the losses from this unwise and illegal war.

Hundreds of our troops have been injured, and stories come out about the depth of those injuries and the lack of planning that left them exposed to the attacks that caused them to be injured. While I wish it were otherwise, it is likely that there will be more such stories.

There is also the cost in dollars. We are spending, by some estimates, between $1 billion and $2 billion a day. We are expecting to see the President, sometime soon, send over a new request for a dramatic increase in funding to fund this Iran war.

But let me talk about costs in a different way, just the cost to everyday Americans' pocketbooks.

Today is tax day. Today is tax day. President Trump is the ``taxer in chief.'' Last year, he imposed chaotic tariffs on the world's economy, right before tax day, and those tariffs cost American families a couple of thousand dollars each. With this one-man tariff war that President Trump started without having congressional authority--that was, ultimately, in significant part, struck down as illegal by the Supreme Court in February of this year--last year, right before tax day, President Trump stood up and showed by his actions that he was the ``taxer in chief.''

This year, on tax day, we are seeing Americans pay more for food, pay more for energy, and pay more for building supplies because of the actions of this President--in particular, just the price of gas at the gas pump in Virginia and nationally. The price of gas has gone up $1 a gallon since February 27, just because of President Trump's unilateral decision to take us to war.

Virginians buy 8 million gallons of gas a day. So that is $8 million Virginians are having to shell out of their pockets--that they weren't having to shell out--because Donald Trump started this war.

This is happening in Illinois. It is happening in Connecticut. It is happening in Nebraska. It is happening in every State, and it is happening all over the world. We are reading about economies that are shutting down 1 day a week. We are reading about street protests in allied nations over the cost of petroleum, all driven by this one man's deciding to take us to war.

So the first lesson from the last 45 days: War is costly.

The second lesson is, an unwise war is deeply unpopular. This war is deeply unpopular with the American public.

Most of us took the last 2 weeks of recess to travel around our States. I represent Virginia, which I believe is one of the most pro- military States in the country. I spent significant time in the Hampton Roads area, which is the center of American naval power, where we build ships and subs, and it has the biggest Navy base in the world.

I spent a lot of time with Virginians over the last 2 weeks. This war is unpopular. Virginians are deployed, and they don't know why, and they don't know when they will come home.

The USS Ford carrier, today, passes the record for the longest deployment of a carrier in American modern history. They were supposed to be home with their families before Christmas, and they are still deployed away from their families, with significant maintenance issues reducing the quality of life on that ship.

This war is unpopular. But, of course, it is unpopular. If you go to war without a clear rationale--and the President has floated five or six of them. If you go to war without a clear plan, without apparently anticipating what everyone would have anticipated with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, if you go to war without allies, if you go to war without Congress, the war will be unpopular. With no plan, no rationale, no allies, and no congressional debate, the war will be unpopular.

This was so easy to predict at the beginning. For some reason, the President thought the magic of his own personality could turn a war of choice into something that would be embraced by the American public. The American public is too smart for that.

So an unwise war is deeply unpopular. That is a lesson of the last 45 days.

Then, the last lesson, I believe, is a profound one that we have to acknowledge, and that is this: Those who make diplomacy impossible make war inevitable.

The President, the Vice President, and his U.N. Representative--even within the last 2 hours, in a hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee--said the war was necessary to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. There is no intelligence that said that Iran was near getting a nuclear weapon. If what President Trump wanted was to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, then he committed one of the most egregious blunders in the history of the United States, in his first term, when he tore up a diplomatic deal that did precisely that.

The United States and our European allies and adversaries--China and Russia--engaged in a 20-month negotiation with Iran that led to an agreement. On the first page of the agreement--page 1--Iran reaffirms that it will never seek to purchase or develop any nuclear weapons. We had the agreement with Iran for no nuclear weapons. We had mechanisms of inspection. We had limitations on centrifuges and limitations on the enrichment of plutonium or uranium.

We had a diplomatic deal, and the President tore it up. The deal was working according to our allies. The deal was working according to President Trump's first Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense, who urged him to stay in it.

The deal was working, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency that was investigating and inspecting Iranian facilities, but President Trump took a deal that guaranteed no nuclear weapons ever, and he tore it up. The United States doesn't walk away from diplomatic deals; other nations do that. But the President established a dangerous precedent. And many of us said to him at the time: If you tear up a diplomatic deal, you are paving the path to war. It might be soon or it might not be soon, but you are paving a path to war.

If you make diplomacy impossible, you make war inevitable, and that is exactly what Donald Trump has done. Those troops who have died, they have died because Trump tore up a diplomatic deal. The costs that are being experienced by American consumers, we are suffering those costs because Donald Trump tore up a diplomatic deal. The injuries to civilians, to schoolchildren, the injuries to American troops, those are occurring because Donald Trump tore up a diplomatic deal.

We still have a seal that is available right here on the walls of the Senate that has the eagle representing the United States and in each claw it is holding the arrows of war or the laurel branches of peace, and the seal of the United States always has the eagle looking to the laurel branches. We are supposed to prefer diplomacy first.

But Donald Trump has decided that a Department of Defense now needs to be a Department of War, and rules of engagement to protect civilians now can be dismissed and called stupid and things that we don't need to follow.

I hope this body still believes that America should prefer diplomacy first. I hope this body still believes in the United States being a values-based nation, not a bully nation. That is what this vote is about, and that is why I am so proud to join my colleague to support it, and I will continue to be on the floor with my colleagues every week until we stop an illegal and unwise war.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise in support of Senator Sanders' resolutions. I will be voting for both of them.

On February 21, 2024, I wrote a public letter to President Biden, and I said: The Hamas attack on Israel is devastating and Israel faces threats from other adversaries in the region and we should help Israel defend its civilians, but we should do so only by providing defensive weapons to Israel and not offensive weapons.

Why defensive weapons?

We have long been a security partner of Israel. Those who follow the relationship understand there are threats to Israeli civilians that are very present because of actors in the region like Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis; and Iran and Iranian-backed militias and Israeli civilians do face threats that warrant the United States providing defensive support.

But I took the public position more than 2 years ago now that it would be wrong to send offensive weapons to Israel, and that position was based on exactly the same reason, to protect civilians--protect Palestinian civilians, protect Lebanese civilians--to protect civilians. Offensive weapons delivered to Israel in the way they are using them, particularly bombs, are guaranteed to cause mass civilian suffering. That is what has happened in Gaza, and that is what is happening in Lebanon.

Anyone who has paid attention to this region just has to answer this question: Is more civilian death going to get us to the right place?

This is a region that has been replete with the deaths of civilians, and the U.S. taxpayer and this body should not be pouring gasoline or adding tinder to a fire where more and more civilians are in jeopardy.

So, since that public letter to President Biden, I have supported Senator Sanders and other resolutions before. If weapons are offensive in nature, the United States shouldn't be transferring them, and I will support the resolutions for that matter. We need to protect civilians. We don't need to pour gasoline on a fire in the region and accelerate more deaths of civilians.

I have received some outreach about this particular vote from some who say this is a vote to deny all military aid to Israel. That is not what this vote is about. This is about denying particular weapons that are offensive in nature.

Just to give you an order of magnitude, during this term of Congress, the President has noticed 27 different arms transfers to Israel; and with these two joint resolutions of disapproval, we have challenged 6-- 6 of those 27 arms transfers--as being offensive in nature. We have not challenged 21 of the arms transfers that are primarily defensive in nature. There has not been a single Senator who has brought up a challenge to the defensive arms sales because we want to protect civilian lives; but when weapons like this that are offensive in nature are guaranteed to lead to the deaths of civilians, I think it is appropriate to challenge them, and that is why I am going to support these resolutions.

I have also had some say that, if these resolutions succeed, the United States is reducing its support for Israeli defense. That is also not true. The support for Israeli defense is the result of a 10-year memorandum of understanding that has an annual allocation for Israeli defense that has been supplemented by a supplemental bill that was passed by this body in April of 2024. That amount of money, which is an annual allocation, gets drawn down by these transfers.

I would urge my colleagues to support the cessation of offensive weapons transfers. If this bill succeeds, it doesn't reduce support for Israeli defense by a single penny. It just means that Israel should request and the United States should consider transferring defensive weapons to enable Israel to defend its own civilians but not to carry out military action that would harm other civilians.

The principle of ``let's just stop the damage to civilians in the region'' seems to me to be overwhelming. If the deaths of civilians were accomplishing anything, we would have seen that accomplishment long before now. So stopping the transfer of offensive weapons seems to me to be the right thing to do not just for the United States security interests and the safety of our servicemembers in the region, but it is also the right thing to do to promote regional stability and the security of Israel.

For that reason, I will vote for the resolutions, and I appreciate my colleague for introducing them.

Mr. President, I rise in support of Senator Murphy's War Powers Resolution, which I am proud to cosponsor.

I came to this body in 2013, and as I have described on multiple occasions on the floor under both Democratic and Republican Presidents, I came with one obsession, and that obsession was that the Nation should not be at war without a vote of Congress.

That obsession was born out of twin experiences--having had a child in the military and then having been Governor of Virginia and watching my Virginia guard members deploy repeatedly into Iraq and Afghanistan over the course of the years that I served in office. I had gone to too many deployments, too many homecomings. I had gone to too many wakes and to too many funerals to simply allow war to be waged on autopilot or at the say-so of any President--Democrat or Republican--no matter what their previous experience in military matters or lack of experience was.

The Founders of the Constitution were wise to decide that committing our kids' lives to war was not a decision that should be made by one person. There are exceptions recognized in the Constitution. A President can take action without Congress. If there is an ongoing attack on the United States, in self-defense, no permission is needed. A President can initiate military action if Congress has previously voted on an authorization that covers it; but other than that, there no shortcut, and there is no E-ZPass lane, and there shouldn't be.

So this is now the third resolution--and I thank my colleague Senator Murphy for bringing it--to basically ask the question of this body: Have we seen enough? Have we seen enough that we should at least have public hearings about this war? Have we seen enough that we should have a debate about whether this war should be authorized by Congress or not?

We plan on coming back every week and asking the question: Have we seen enough?--until the Senate does what the Senate is supposed to do according to the Founders, to the Framers, of our Constitution.

Since we were here last week, a number of things have happened. The number of casualties has continued to grow. The cost has continued to grow. There was significant reporting yesterday that other nations are encouraging the United States to continue this war. The reporting yesterday was that Saudi Arabia is encouraging the United States to continue this war. The reporting last week was that Israel is encouraging the United States to continue this war. Israel and Saudi Arabia are sovereign nations that have the right to make their own decisions for their own people, but they don't have the right to suggest what is the right course for the United States. We have very different interests--we have very, very different interests than those nations--and we should make the right decision for ourselves after consideration.

The price of oil has continued to significantly increase from last week. When I took the floor last week on Senator Booker's resolution, the price of oil had gone up $0.60 a gallon since before the war began on February 28. Now it has gone up $1.02. Just to convert that into the cost at the pump for Virginians, Virginians buy 8 million gallons of fuel at the pump every day. So, at $1 a gallon, that is $8 million that Virginians are spending for fuel every day that they weren't spending before the war. All indications by those who are experts in this area-- and I do not proclaim expertise in energy--is that the energy shock is likely to continue to drive up costs at the pump for Virginians and Americans for a very long time.

Why did the Framers set it up so that war should be debated before it is initiated?

So that you could ask questions.

What is the rationale for the war?

The President has suggested it was to obliterate a nuclear program that he claimed had been obliterated; to stop a ballistic missile program when the missiles' progress in Iran would have been years before they could have developed a missile that would have reached the United States; to change a regime; to back up Iranian protesters; maybe to control Iranian oil. We would have been able to ask questions about the rationale and get an answer rather than a shifting collection of answers that has been given.

We would have been able to ask questions about: What are your plans to minimize harm to civilians? We have already seen tragedies with respect to harm to civilians.

What are your plans to protect allies who, if Iran is attacked, are likely to face retaliatory attacks from Iran?

Many of our allies were not prepared to face what Iran did because the United States did not consult with them.

Just to use one item in this that would clearly have been a discussion if the administration had done what the Constitution requires and come to Congress: What about the Strait of Hormuz where massive percentages of the world's energy and critical minerals-- fertilizer and other byproducts--come through the Strait? What is the plan for that?

What is the plan to make sure that the Strait is not choked off in a way that hurts everyday American families and the entire global economy?

I mean, this is not an unforeseen problem. The British closed off the Strait of Hormuz in the early 1950s to punish Iran. The Shah of Iran threatened that many times during the war between Iraq and Iran in the 1980s. As those two nations were fighting, tankers were hit in ways that often shut down the Strait of Hormuz. So the Strait of Hormuz being shut down and then having a massive effect on the global economy was an absolutely known and completely foreseeable consequence of a war in the region.

And yet in the last week, the reporting of this is that either-- either--the White House didn't consider it or the White House was warned by military officials that this could happen and it would hurt the United States and others--a warning that they ignored.

Now, either of those options is bad. If they didn't consider the possibility that history demonstrated was a likelihood, that shows incredibly slipshod planning, and if they considered that possibility because it happened before and dismissed it, that also demonstrates a shocking degree of naivete.

And so we see, just in that one instance, how Virginians are being punished by paying more at the pump because of the closure of those straits. This is an entirely predictable consequence of war that didn't get an airing before the public or before the Senate, who could have asked challenging questions.

Some believe subjecting a war plan to being asked challenging questions is a burden or is a hassle or, you know, it is going to be something that we don't want to do.

No, that is exactly what should happen. Any proposal of this magnitude that is going to risk the lives of our troops should be subjected to the most searing examination that we would do of anything in this body.

And I want to conclude, because there are others who want to speak, but I will just take it back to Virginia. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Virginians are currently deployed on the USS Ford Carrier Strike Group. That was a strike group based in Norfolk that deployed in June.

When it deployed, the normal deployment for a carrier strike group is 7 months. So the expectation of all who deployed was that they would be home by the holidays; they would be home with the family by the holidays. Instead, at the end of last year, the President ordered that the deployment be extended so that the Ford that was positioned in the Middle East could come into the Caribbean or the Pacific to assist in the effort to ultimately invade Venezuela. And so they extended the deployment another 2 months.

And then the Ford was told that it needed to deploy back across the water to provide support for the invasion and the attack of Iran, and so the deployment has been extended further.

The Ford is about to set the record for the longest deployment ever, but this has a cost. The Virginians and others who are deployed with the strike group thought they were going to be home at Christmas, and now it is being extended more and more and more.

And the Ford carrier is suffering significant maintenance challenges that threaten the actual lives of those on board. First, it was threatening quality of life with problems with the toilet systems and other onboard systems on the carrier, which are not hard to predict when you run a carrier at a much greater length than was planned for the original deployment, and these affected basic quality of life and morale.

But it got more serious. Last week, we learned that a fire started at the laundry facilities on the Ford that took 30 hours to put out, and 200 sailors on the Ford suffered smoke inhalation injuries because of that fire.

Now, recently, the Ford has been pulled out of frontline combat support activities and taken back to Crete for repairs. But, again, these sailors aren't coming home anytime soon, and that ship that was supposed to be out there for 7 months is now into the 11 months--well, I guess it would be now coming on 9 months, with more to come.

This is the kind of human cost that happens when you go into a war without a rationale or without a plan. And so what we need is a plan, I believe, to bring this to a close.

We were at war in the Middle East for 25 years, and I have yet to hear a single colleague of mine come and make a speech on the floor to suggest that those 14,000-plus American lives killed or the 65,000-plus Americans injured or the $8 trillion spent--I have yet to hear a single person come here and say that was a chapter in American life that we should be proud of.

We should have learned something from it. The first thing we should have learned is that another war in the Middle East probably makes no sense. But we certainly should have learned that, before we go into one, we have to examine it in significant detail to make sure that we are not sending our sons and daughters into harm's way for no valid reason.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I am glad to join my colleagues on the floor in support of Senator Booker's War Powers Resolution.

For those who wonder what a War Powers Resolution is, it is pretty simple. It is a very short resolution saying no war without a vote of Congress. We should not be at war with Iran without a vote of Congress.

Traditionally, when a President wants to go to war, the President will give an authorization to Congress, and there will be a debate and a vote in this body on that authorization. President Trump has decided to end-run the Constitution and end-run Congress by starting this war on his own without consulting with Congress, without consulting with allies--without consulting with virtually anyone--and ignoring a lot of advice he got about why he shouldn't get us into this war.

Now, many of you here know that we had a vote on a War Powers Resolution that I introduced a few days after the war began and that we fell short of the number of votes that were needed. At the time, Congress voted: Don't bother us. We may be at war--and, yes, the President is end-running Congress--but please don't bother us. Don't make us have a debate about whether this war should be authorized or not.

So what is different today than when we voted on my War Powers Resolution 10 days to 2 weeks ago? I will tell you what is different: 13 American troops have died, their futures cut off, families bereft and grieving. We learned yesterday that the number of Americans injured in this war--seriously injured in this war--now tops 200. Their lives are potentially forever altered by this illegal and unnecessary war.

We learned that a missile strike on an elementary school in Iran that killed 175 little kids was actually a strike by an American missile. President Trump said it was an Iranian missile, but we now know from the Pentagon's own evidence that the strike on the school that killed these innocent schoolchildren was an American missile.

Since we had the vote on the floor on my resolution, we have seen gas prices in the United States go up by, on average, about 60 cents a gallon. Virginians buy 8 million gallons of gas a day. The cost to Virginians daily, just in the gas increase, is nearly $5 million. Virginians are paying every day $5 million more for gas because of this war. I talked to a prominent American airline. They are paying $25 million a day more in fuel costs than they were before the war because of the war, and they passed that on to passengers who were traveling.

The economic dislocation is massive. We have seen the deaths of innocent civilians, the deaths of our own troops, injuries to our own troops, and the consequences are getting larger and larger and larger. Yet, as my colleague Senator Murphy says, we are still unable to get the Senate majority and the administration to agree to any public hearings where they have to answer questions that the American public has.

My public in Virginia is chock-full of parents of military members, chock-full of spouses of military members; and they have questions about their loved ones currently deployed or who may be deployed. But the administration is afraid to have public hearings.

I am going to conclude and say this: Today, I learned the reason why we are not having public hearings in one of the key committees, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. We had a closed-door hearing, and Senator Murphy asked the chair, our colleague from Idaho, who is nothing if not a straight shooter--he will always give you a straight answer: Why are we not having public hearings about this war in the committees of jurisdiction, the Foreign Relations Committee and the Armed Services Committee? And the chair of the Foreign Relations Committee explained that he thought it would be counterproductive for the administration officials to be examined by Senators in public about their decisions.

It would be counterproductive to have to answer why you view this as worthy of sending our kids to their possible death or injury? It would be counterproductive to have to answer in public why is this worth nearly a billion dollars a day of American taxpayer money? It would be counterproductive to answer questions about didn't you think this would cause massive economic problems for everyday American citizens?

This war is being hidden in classified because the administration does not have the confidence in its own position sufficient to be willing to answer the basic questions that we all have.

If our young people are being asked to risk their lives in this war, then we shouldn't be afraid to put the facts of the war before the American public, where they can make a judgment about whether it is in the best interest of this Nation. And that is why I am so glad to have cosponsored this resolution.

I will be voting for it, and we are not going to stop putting this issue before the body until the Senate does what the Senate is supposed to do and only engage in warmaking when it has been determined by Congress that it is in the best interest of the country.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I have been hearing my colleagues discuss this matter. You know, I think I want to just try to separate out the political rhetoric and maybe also puncture some of the Senate speak we use to talk about the kinds of bills we are considering and just talk about an elemental rule of negotiation that, I think, most of us learned pretty early, which is, when you can find agreement, go for it--do it--and on the areas where you disagree, keep talking. Go for it when you agree, and on the areas of disagreement, keep talking.

If you have listened to this debate today, what you have heard is there are huge areas of agreement on this floor and there is a sharp area of disagreement. We can act on the agreement, and we should. Everyone on this floor, I believe--certainly those who have been talking today and, I think, the overwhelming majority--we have agreed that TSA should be funded. We have agreed that the Coast Guard should be funded. We have agreed that FEMA should be funded. We have agreed that the CISA, Cybersecurity Agency, should be funded.

I think I am right about this. To my colleague from Washington, we have not only agreed that they should be funded, but we have written the bills--exactly the line items--in bipartisan agreement in both Houses. We have put reforms into those bills that both sides agree with--and those bills are ready to be acted on--to give the employees of those Agencies and the citizens who rely on them the certainty that they will be funded through the end of the year. So why wouldn't we do that? That is what Senator Murray's proposal is. We have reached an agreement. Let's do it.

Senator Britt offered a different proposal in those areas of agreement: Let's just fund them for 2 weeks and not with the agreed- upon structure and the reforms and the line item amounts.

When somebody says they want to do a ``continuing resolution''--for those who aren't familiar with that Senate term, what it means is, instead of the negotiation we did about how to fund these Agencies, we will just do for the next 2 weeks what we were doing for the last 2 weeks. I call that driving by looking in the rearview mirror rather than driving by looking through the windshield. We should want to drive by looking through the windshield and not the rearview mirror. We have the bills all done.

Imagine you are at the TSA. Are you going to feel better knowing that the Senate decided to fund you for 2 weeks or that the Senate decided to fund you for the entire rest of the year?

How about if you are a coastie and you are on a ship, doing interdiction in the Caribbean? Will you feel better if it is a 2-week deal or if we are going to fund you for the rest of the year?

If you are at FEMA, doing an emergency, we are going to fund you for the rest of the year.

The proposal that Senator Murray has offered is far preferable for all of the employees in these Agencies where we have reached agreement than a deal that just says: Well, we will fund you for the next 2 weeks, and then who knows what will happen after that.

So, since we have found agreement--meaningful, substantive, bipartisan, bicameral agreement--on every line item and every detail and every reform affecting all of these really important Agencies, why wouldn't we move forward on it?

I just don't understand why my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would want to do 2 weeks of funding when we could do the full- year funding for these Agencies. The area of disagreement is obvious. It is the area of immigration reform as performed by ICE and the CBP.

Now, I heard one of my colleagues the Senator from Oklahoma say the goal of ours is to defund it until everybody quits. That is a hyperbole that is not true. I have been here for 13 years. I have voted for so much funding for DHS and so much funding for the CBP and ICE, but now the American public

and we all--to one degree or another--just know there have to be reforms. We are not going to give a blank check. We are demanding reforms.

To my colleagues who are here with me, we had a budget hearing yesterday, and the budget hearing was about immigration enforcement. The Republicans had as a witness one of Virginia's sheriffs--the sheriff of Loudoun County, Sheriff Chapman. He was there to talk about immigration enforcement through the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office. I pointed out that I have dealt with them a lot over the years. I go to the Halloween parade and other things in Leesburg. If you are not doing anything on Halloween, go to Leesburg, and go the Halloween parade. It is fantastic. And when you see the Loudoun County sheriff's deputies, they don't wear masks. They wear uniforms that identify that they work for the Loudoun County sheriff. They wear name tags. They use body cameras.

You know, if the Loudoun County sheriff's department can uphold basic standards of law enforcement professionalism, why is it unreasonable for the American public, and why is it unreasonable for Democrat Senators to ask the same thing of Federal law enforcement agents who work at ICE and the CBP?

These are commonsense reforms, but we haven't yet found Republicans who are willing to agree on them. OK. That means we still have work to do. Let's do that work, but let's give full-year funding to all of these other Agencies where we have found agreement, not 2-week funding, not just, you know, we will kick it down the road for 2 weeks and then you have got to worry over the next 2 weeks whether you are going to have a paycheck. It should be full-year funding for all the Agencies except where we are having this most important debate.

The elementary rule of negotiation: When you can find agreement, go for it; and on areas where you can't, keep talking. That is what the Murray proposal is, and that is why I so strongly support it.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today, I believe, as the penultimate speaker before we have a vote on the War Powers Resolution, a bipartisan resolution I filed with Senators Paul, Schiff, and Schumer.

I rise today in support of our troops, who don't deserve to be sent into war unless this Congress votes that there should be such a war.

I pray for the families who are learning that their loved ones will not come home. I pray for the families whose children or spouses are deployed overseas, unable to sleep with worry about them.

Mr. President, I have paid attention over the course of the last 13 months as this President has again and again and again used our troops to carry out military action without coming to Congress. I have paid attention to the reasons that my colleagues are giving who want to give the President an E-ZPass around the Constitution.

When we had a vote last summer about the attack on Iran at the end of the Israeli 12-day war, by the time the vote had been called up, that bombing mission was in the rearview mirror, and so my colleague from Idaho said: There are no hostilities. The hostilities are over, so you should vote against the resolution on that ground.

When we called up an effort to constrain the President from illegally striking boats in international waters, the legal rationale asserted by my colleagues and the White House to vote down a War Powers Resolution and end-run the Constitution was: These are pinprick strikes that don't rise to the level of war. Only if it is war must the White House come to Congress.

When I brought forward a resolution a month or so ago to say no war in Venezuela without a vote of Congress,

again my colleague from Idaho said: This isn't war. It is over. It was one and done. There are no troops left in Venezuela.

There has been one reason after the next to give the President an E- ZPass lane around the Constitution.

Well, today, we are dealing with something different. You can't stand up and say this is a pinprick that doesn't lead to the level that would be characterized as war. You can't stand up and say this is one and done and no troops are engaged in hostilities against Iran.

Members of the Senate, this is war. The President of the United States has called it a war against Iran. The head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Caine, has called it a war against Iran. Secretary Rubio, our Secretary of State, has called it a war against Iran.

All of the excuses that you have advanced to give the President an E- ZPass around the Constitution and suggest he needn't come to Congress all evaporate because this is a war. It is a war.

Many of my colleagues know that during the classified briefing yesterday--I can't reveal information given to me, but I can say what I said. I challenged the body, including the administration witnesses: Your escalating pattern of military action without seeking approval convinces me that you believe you never need to come to Congress to wage war against anyone anywhere.

I hoped that someone might refute my point and tell me I am wrong and they would come to Congress, but no one did.

So here we are in a war that has cost American lives, that is leading to chaos throughout the region, that threatens to grow bigger and bigger and bigger. And I am asking the Senate to do what the Framers of the Constitution said we should do--debate and vote about matters of war.

What are the arguments now that the other side has made to suggest we should vote down this resolution?

First, they say that Iran are bad actors. On that, we would agree. If you put in a resolution ``Iran has carried out a lot of bad actions,'' you would get a 100-to-zip vote in this body on that resolution. But being a bad actor is not an E-ZPass around the Constitution. It does not allow us to take our sons and daughters into war and risk their lives without a debate and vote. That is not a sufficient rationale.

The other rationale--and you just heard my colleague make it--was that the effort to bring a War Powers Resolution, a bipartisan resolution, before this body is somehow partisan; it is this side trying to come to the aid of the regime.

There is nothing partisan about the Constitution. There is nothing partisan about caring for our kids and wanting to have a debate before they get sent into harm's way to risk their lives.

This is not a partisan issue on our side. We are basically asking a question of the entire Senate--indeed, of the entire Nation: Have we learned nothing from 25 years of war in the Middle East?

Mr. President, 14,000 American troops and contractors were killed in Iran and Afghanistan. More than 65,000 American troops and contractors were injured in these wars. These nearly 80,000 people were from every walk of life, every State and territory, every race, every age, every rank, every religion, every gender. They only have two things in common: A, they had a patriotic desire to serve their country, and B, their futures were dramatically affected--in some instances, eliminated--because of 25 years of war in the Middle East.

Someone suggested yesterday that this resolution was our effort to gum up the work of the--what is the work of the Senate? What is the work of the Senate if it is not to discuss the circumstances under which we should send our kids into war?

In addition to the lives lost of American troops and contractors and those injured, hundreds of thousands of innocent civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, more than $8 trillion was spent that could have been spent on American healthcare, on American housing, on American education--spent on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and what did we get for it? What did we get for it? If people think 25 years of war in the Middle East was a good thing or produced something, I hope they would come to the floor and tell us what we gained from it.

This effort to force a vote is not about partisanship; it is about the Constitution. But even more importantly, it is about the lives of our troops and the question of what, in fact, we got from 25 years of war in the Middle East and whether we should continue that ``forever war.'' The President tweeted out the phrase ``forever war'' today when he talked about the munitions that we have.

We don't need illegal wars. We don't need forever wars. We don't need more wars in the Middle East.

Let me say this and conclude and yield to our Democratic leader. I have said this to my colleagues before. I came to this body in 2013 with the experience of being a Governor and watched my Virginians repeatedly deployed, time after time after time--Active Duty, Guard, Reserve, DOD civilians, Virginia National Guard--into the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And I went to the deployments, and I went to the homecomings, and I went to the wakes, and I went to the funerals, and I signed the condolence letters that all Governors sign when they get the bad news that one of their own has lost their lives in war.

And when I came to this body in 2013, I said that I would do anything I could in my power to stop any President--Democrat or Republican--from waging war without coming to Congress and that I would especially do anything I could to stop an unwise, unnecessary war that puts our troops' lives at risk for no legitimate reason. Colleagues who have been with me since 2013 know that I have upheld that standard against Presidents of both parties. When President Obama wanted to use military action in Syria to punish the Syrian regime for using chemical weapons against its own citizens, even though I was his friend, I stood up and said: You cannot do that without a vote of Congress.

Presidents can defend against incoming attack, protect against Houthis firing at our ships in the Red Sea. Presidents can act when there is a preexisting congressional authorization to go after terrorists who Congress voted the President should be able to act against. But in this instance, there is no congressional authorization on the books that would authorize this military action. And as my colleagues have amply demonstrated, the administration and their shifting set of rationales, and even in a classified setting, could produce no evidence--none--that the United States was under an imminent threat of attack from Iran.

It is easy to try to dismiss this by saying: Oh, it is about partisanship. And those who would say that say it so they don't have to grapple, I believe, with their own sense of unease about what we are starting on right now.

Perhaps this war will be over in a few weeks or a few months. We pray that it will be, but that is what we thought about the war in Iraq when we claimed that the mission was accomplished, when we claimed that we were met as liberators. And yet, years and years and years later, troops from all of our States were still coming home deeply wounded and affected, both physically and in their mental health, from those wars, from seeing what happened to them and their friends. Some never came home.

If there is one thing we do that we have to get right, it is this. It is this. We can't afford to hide under a desk and let any President-- Democrat or Republican--send our best and brightest, our own kids, into war to risk their lives unless we have debated it, we have determined it is in the national interest, we have voted and thereby put our signature and our thumbprint on the notion that it is worth sending our best and brightest to risk their lives.

I urge my colleagues: As this is escalating from pinprick strikes and one-off operations now into full war, even called war by the President and his chief advisers, let's stand up and do what the Constitution requires us to do.

I urge a ``yes'' vote on my resolution.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, pursuant to section 601(b) of the International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act, I move to discharge the Committee on Foreign Relations from further consideration of S.J. Res. 104, to direct the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities within or against the Islamic Republic of Iran that have not been authorized by Congress.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Merkley and I be permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each prior to the scheduled rollcall vote.

Madam President, I want to thank my colleague from California and my cosponsor on the War Powers Resolution, which will be heard within the next 48 hours or so.

I spoke on this at some length on Thursday, before the President launched the U.S. attack on Iran on Saturday morning, and I asked the question: Have we learned nothing from 25 years of war in the Middle East? Have we learned nothing? Have we learned nothing from nearly two decades-plus of war against Iraq and Afghanistan?

And I wanted to go into: What did the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan mean? Because they mean some things that should compel us to learn some lessons. And then I will talk about, at least, a couple of lessons we should learn.

In Afghanistan, 2,324 U.S. servicemembers were killed--uniformed troops and DOD civilians--and 3,917 U.S. citizens who were contractors were killed. So 6,241 people were killed--American servicemembers and contractors--and 20,913 military personnel were injured in Afghanistan. The injuries among our contractors is unknown. There was a number that it was up to 2,500 by March 2007, but we were there until 2021. So the actual number is much higher.

So 6,241 Americans were killed in Afghanistan, and as far as we know, probably more than 25,000 U.S. military personnel and contractors were injured. Afghan civilians: 46,319 Afghan civilians' deaths have been directly attributed to the war in Afghanistan.

What was the cost to the American taxpayer of the war in Afghanistan? It was $2.3 trillion in total cost, including the interest and the future obligation for veterans care for the veterans who served so honorably.

So when I ask about ``Have we learned anything in the last 25 years from the war in Afghanistan?'' those 6,241 deaths, 25,000 injuries, and $2.3 trillion should have taught us something.

Iraq: 4,598 U.S. military personnel were killed in Iraq.

I remember, early in my time as Governor, going to Iraq to visit the Virginia Guard troops who were deployed there and going to the base where somebody I went to church with, who was a State employee at our department of social services, had been killed.

So 4,598 U.S. personnel were killed, and 3,650 U.S. contractors were killed in Iraq, totaling 8,248 American servicemembers and contractors killed in Iraq. The total killed in both Iraq and Afghanistan: 14,489 Americans lost their lives. Each one of them had a name; each one of them had a family; each one of them had a life of experience; each one of them had a future that was never to be. We ought to have learned something from this.

In Iraq, 32,000 of our troops were injured, and another 10,569 contractors were injured--that should teach us something. And in the Iraqi civilian population--this was a harder one to analyze and estimate--but the estimates are somewhere between 185,000 to 208,000 Iraqi civilians were killed. And the total cost of the Iraq war, to add to the $2.3 trillion of the war in Afghanistan, was $2.9 trillion, and that is the military costs, plus the veterans' care.

If you add up the cost of both of these wars--the cost of the war, the cost of the veterans' care, and then the interest on the debt we incurred to pay for the war--the total cost to American taxpayers of 25 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan was nearly $8 trillion.

Here is a statistic that stunned me: As of 2021, nearly 31,000 U.S. servicemembers and veterans who served in the 9/11 era--post-9/11 era died by suicide, four times the number of servicemembers who were killed. We should have learned something. We should have learned something.

What are the lessons that we should learn from this carnage? From 14,489 of our Americans killed, from 66,000 of our troops and contractors injured--all this civilian death, all this money, what should we learn? First, that we should not be going into a war in the Middle East, or anywhere, without a good, solid reason that has had its tires kicked and that has demonstrated that it is of a magnitude sufficient to warrant losses that could reach this scale.

So what is the reason asserted for going to war with Iran? The President has asserted many reasons: We are doing it to stop their nuclear program. But he obliterated it 6 months ago, and he had a diplomatic deal that controlled it that he tore up 7 or 8 years ago. So it is not about the nuclear program.

We want to protect Iranian protestors. But wait a minute. This President is deporting to Iran Iranian refugees living in the United States, including Iranian refugees who will be persecuted in Iran because of their religion. He doesn't care about Iranians being mistreated by the regime.

We need to go to war to stop a ballistic missile program. But the intelligence, as publicly reported, suggests that the missile program does not pose a danger to the U.S. mainland for at least a decade.

The President tweeted the other night: We should go to war with Iran--or suggested because they interfered in the 2020 election. He is blaming them because he still can't admit that he lost the--is that what we should send our sons and daughters into war for, because the President can't admit that he lost the 2020 election?

Or maybe it is about oil. What are the two nations that the President has invaded? Venezuela and Iran. Boy, they are really different nations, except there is one thing about them that is in common: They are both oil-producing nations. This President has asserted no real reason that is clear to the American public, and that is why the American public, so far, is so against this.

And then the other thing is, we shouldn't go in and run this risk with no reasons; and even if you have a reason, you shouldn't go in without a plan. So what is the plan? The President has said it would be 2 or 3 days. The President has said it will be 5 or 6 weeks. The President said: I am not going to rule out boots on the ground. The President has said: We will bomb until we are done and then, Iranians, take over your government. That is the plan? We are going to bomb until we stop and then it is a jump ball for whoever wants to take over? That is not a plan.

It is not a plan that is well-designed when Kuwait shoots down three U.S. F-15s. Kuwait is an ally. We are working together with Kuwait. And in the opening days of this, if an ally is shooting down three U.S. F- 15s because: Oh, wow, we didn't realize they were U.S. planes, what kind of a plan is that? There is no rationale, and there is no plan; and without a rationale or a plan, why would we ignore the lessons of the last 25 years?

Look, I pray, just like we all do, that the consequences of Iran will not be those that I read to you earlier: the consequences of Iraq and the consequences in Afghanistan. But Iran is a bigger nation than both with a bigger population than both and a more powerful military than both. We went into Iraq and achieved what many thought was a very prompt victory: Mission accomplished. We will be viewed as liberators. It seemed like it was smooth sailing a month in, and then 10 years later, those numbers kept racking up and racking up and racking up. To use Lincoln's words from his second inaugural address, ``Fondly do we hope--fervently do we pray''--that consequences of a war against Iran will not be what were the consequences of wars against Iraq and Afghanistan, but we would be foolish to stand here and say we know they will not be. We have to have the humility to acknowledge, with the fact that U.S. servicemembers have already lost their lives and been injured, that we could face serious consequences--serious consequences in the loss and death of our troops, serious consequences of instability in the region, serious consequences in rising energy prices for Americans.

Who in the world will be the chief beneficiary of energy prices going up--the cost of oil going up? I will tell you who: Vladimir Putin. Russia has an economy that is very centered on oil exports and on the prices of natural gas, and Vladimir Putin has just seen a massive surplus likely come into the Russian state treasury for a significant period of time, as long as energy prices are elevated by this war in the Middle East.

We will have this War Powers vote within the next 48 hours or so, and every Member of this body will do the most solemn thing any of us ever do: Vote on whether the United States should be at war. That sounds like an abstraction. Vote on whether we want to send our own kids--our own sons and

daughters, the most precious resource we have in this country--into a war that could end up like the wars we have just recently exited in the same region.

I pray so hard for my colleagues to exercise the judgment that this is not the right time for more war. If more war with Iran would be the answer, we have been at war with them essentially since 1953 when we toppled their democratically elected government, and it has been back and forth for 70 years--us striking them, them striking us, us striking them, them striking us. Hundreds and hundreds--thousands of people killed. If more war were the answer, we would have found it before now. It is not the answer now. I pray that my colleagues will support the War Powers Resolution.

I yield the floor.