About $10 billion in taxpayer dollars has been spent on the war against the Islamic State, but lawmakers still have not debated and authorized that mission, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said on Wednesday.
Kaine, speaking on the Senate floor, laid out some numbers. Since operations against the Islamic State began more than two years ago in August 2014, more than 5,000 Americans have served in Operation Inherent Resolve. Operations have been going on for 800 days and five Americans have been killed in combat.
Because of this, the senator, who is a member of both the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Foreign Relations Committee, said it’s time those troops in danger know that Congress has their backs by passing a new authorization for the use of military force.
“There’s a tacit agreement to avoid debating this war in the one place that it ought to be debated: in the halls of Congress,” he said.
The campaign against the Islamic State is authorized under two previous authorizations for the use of military force from 2001 and 2002. The first authorizes the war against terrorism, but was passed before the Islamic State had formed, and the second authorizes military actions in Iraq.
Critics of the president, as well as some of his supporters such as Kaine, say these authorizations have been stretched beyond their legal limit in covering a war against the Islamic State.
President Obama did answer calls for a new authorization and sent his proposal to Congress in February 2015. But because Democrats saw it as not restrictive enough and Republicans viewed it as something that would tie the hands of the president, the plan never received a vote in Congress. In response, lawmakers introduced several plans of their own, but none of these ever made it to the floor in either chamber.
“[It’s a] public immorality to force people to risk and give their lives for a mission that we’re unwilling to discuss,” Kaine said.
Kaine said his renewed push for this issue was spurred by the death of Senior Chief Petty Officer Scott Cooper Dayton in Syria, the first American military combat death in the mission against the Islamic State in Syria and a resident of Kaine’s home state, Virginia.
The desire for a new war authorization is bipartisan. Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., said a new AUMF is important for troops and their families as well as for the future of the Congress, which has a constitutional responsibility to declare war.
“We are at war with ISIS, we should acknowledge that we are at war with ISIS,” Sasse said on the Senate floor, speaking shortly after Kaine.
Once new lawmakers are sworn in in January, Kaine said about 80 percent of currently-serving members of Congress were not serving when the 2001 authorization was debated, meaning the vast majority of members have never had a meaningful debate about the war.
It’s unclear if President-elect Trump will push for a new authorization.
