Senate Republicans on Thursday blocked a Democratic effort to end the US war with Iran, voting down a House-passed war powers resolution as the conflict that has killed 19 American service members passed the 200-day mark.
The measure, which passed the House last week with bipartisan support, failed in the Senate by a 49-50 vote. Senate Democrats, led by the minority leader, Chuck Schumer, and the senator Andy Kim of New Jersey, forced the vote under the War Powers Resolution, which allows lawmakers to bring such measures to the floor.
The proposal attracted some Republican support, but not enough to pass. For the first time, Thom Tillis of North Carolina voted for the resolution, as did Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Susan Collins of Maine, who had backed previous efforts.
But Bill Cassidy of Louisiana – whose vote was key to passage of a resolution in June – voted no, as did John Fetterman a Democratic senator of Pennsylvania, ensuring the measure’s defeat.
Ron Wyden, the Democratic senator from Oregon, acknowledged the uphill fight for the minority. “We’re going to stay at it until we win,” he said.
Democrats have kept up a steady pace of war powers resolutions ever since Trump ordered the US military to attack Iran in conjunction with Israel at the end of February. While one proposal passed in June, support for others has oscillated – in July, after a ceasefire in the conflict collapsed, the Senate voted 47-49 against advancing a war powers resolution, with Collins the only Republican in support.
Tim Kaine, a Democratic senator from Virginia, who has been a leader of the war powers push in the Senate, said: “We’re going to keep doing them every week because we see Republican candidates out in the field now starting to change their position.” In recent days, Republicans running for key congressional and gubernatorial races in the 3 November midterm elections have called for an end to the conflict, which has worsened the inflation that Trump campaigned on ending.
“They recognize how bad this is,” Kaine said of the Republicans.
Yet, most congressional Republicans remain unconvinced by the campaign to end the war. Dan Sullivan, the Republican senatorfacing a tough re-election contest in Alaska, said: “The war powers vote is about removing American forces from the region, and when there are troops in contact, I don’t believe in doing it.”
Speaking before the vote, Kim, a former state department official who served in the Middle East, said Americans were “sick and tired of this reckless and expensive war”.
“Democrats have taken action. We’ve come to this chamber 11 times in the past 208 days to try to bring this war to an end,” Kim said.
He cited a congressional budget office report estimating the war cost nearly $40bn in its first four months, and said at least 19 US service members had been killed and more than 750 injured. Kim also said estimates showed higher petrol prices had cost American households about $900 each since the war began.
“Chaos is not a negotiating tactic,” Kim said. “Trump is simply over his head here.”
