The Senate voted Tuesday to block an effort to end U.S. military assistance to Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen amid a growing humanitarian crisis there, until Congress votes to approve military action.
The chamber voted to kill a motion by Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Chris Murphy, D-Conn., to discharge their resolution from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and bring language to the floor that would have stopped U.S. help to Saudi forces in selecting airstrike targets, refueling aircraft, and sharing intelligence in the fight against Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
The Senate voted 55-44 in favor of killing the motion.
Proponents of the measure argued that Congress has shirked its responsibilities to authorize U.S. military conflicts abroad and that the Yemen aid is deepening the suffering in the three-year-old war, which has claimed thousands of civilian casualties and displaced about 3 million.
“What we are saying is if Congress wants to go to war in Yemen or anyplace else, vote to go to war. That is your constitutional responsibility,” Sanders said. “Stop abdicating that responsibility to a president, whether it is a Republican president or, in the past, Democratic presidents.”
But Republican leadership wanted to keep the issue at the Foreign Relations Committee. The Pentagon also opposed the bill and said its assistance has helped limit civilian casualties that have climbed into the thousands during the three-year conflict.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis visited the Senate and met with Republicans just hours before the vote.
“We’ve encouraged our colleagues to let the committees do their work,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, the majority whip. “Not everybody is as expert or knowledgeable about this topic as the Committee on Foreign Relations, and we think we can come up with a better, more considered product following the committee’s work, if we allow them to do their job.”
“Hopefully the Senate will not only have an ability to deal with a real bill on Yemen that will actually generate a real outcome coming through committee but also have the ability to deal with an AUMF that will set aside the fact that for years the Congress has not weighed in on this issue. To me that is a much better route,” Corker said.
Corker said the committee already is working on bipartisan legislation on Yemen and is planning an April 19 markup on a new authorization for the use of military force. The military and three presidential administrations have relied upon a 9/11-era authorization for use of military force as the legal basis for waging wars in Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, Niger, and elsewhere.
The AUMF issue has languished at the committee level since the end of the Obama administration, because members are at loggerheads over the parameters and Congress is reluctant to hold a war vote. The Trump administration and the Pentagon say they have all the authority needed to target the Islamic State and other terror groups.
