Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, DN.Y., holds a press conference in the Capitol on Friday, May 28, 2021 after the January 6th vote on funding the commission failed.
Tom Williams | CQ Roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Wednesday backed the lifting of the 2002 US warrant for war in Iraq and said he plans to put the measure to a vote later this year.
The New York Democrat’s announcement comes a day before the House of Representatives plans to vote on a law to abolish the use of military force. Almost 10 years after the end of the Iraq war, other lawmakers from both parties have called for the resolution to be repealed.
“The Iraq war has been over for almost a decade. A permit passed in 2002 is no longer necessary in 2021,” said Schumer, emphasizing that the US “will not give up our relationship with Iraq and its people.”
Efforts to overturn the 2002 AUMF continue the urge in Congress to regain wartime powers after years of presidential discretion. Schumer said the revocation of the permit would “remove the risk of a future government resorting to the legal trash can to be used as a justification for military adventure”.
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The House of Representatives is expected to pass a bill repealing the Iraq resolution on Thursday. Rep. Barbara Lee, a California Democrat and the only member of the House of Representatives who voted against the war permit in Afghanistan in 2001, is the plan’s main sponsor.
The White House announced its support for Lee’s legislation on Monday.
“The government supports the 2002 repeal of the AUMF because the United States has no ongoing military activity based solely on the 2002 AUMF as its domestic legal basis, and a 2002 repeal is likely to have minimal impact on ongoing military operations would.” wrote the Office of Management and Budget.
“In addition, the President pledges to work with Congress to ensure that outdated permits for the use of military force are replaced with a narrow and specific framework that is appropriate to ensure that we can continue to protect Americans from terrorist threats “Continued the OMB.
The Senate Committee on Foreign Relations plans to move forward with a bipartisan bill to repeal the 2002 Iraq War permit, along with a separate 1991 AUMF passed next week before the Gulf War. Sens. Tim Kaine, D-Va., And Todd Young, R-Ind. directed the action.
In a statement Wednesday, Kaine said “so much has changed” since both war permits were passed, adding that the committee’s actions to lift them were “a widespread desire” not to keep old war permits on the books . Young added in a statement that “Congress must exercise its rights as an equal branch of government and ensure that our brave men and women in uniform are sent to war with the full support and support of the elected representatives of the American people in Congress. “
Both Biden, when he was a Senator, and Schumer voted for the AUMF 2002.
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