The struggle to pass the Yemen War Powers Resolution in the House is, among other things, a struggle to crush the endless stream of bad faith excuses for doing nothing about Yemen being mass produced somewhere inside the Washington Beltway by the cruel, heartless @StenyHoyer and his cruel, heartless henchmen. It was this cruel do-nothing-about-Yemen heartlessness of @StenyHoyer in the past that caused Baltimore peace activists to occupy his office before @StenyHoyer changed his mind, dropping the charges against the protesters who had been arrested in his office the same day that he co-sponsored the bill. So let us consider which potential @StenyHoyer bad faith excuses against the Yemen War Powers Resolution we can crush now by studying the Ukraine war powers juncture.
When the Sanders-Lee-Murphy Yemen War Powers Resolution was introduced in the Senate in March 2018, New Hampshire Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen refused to support it and actively worked to undermine it by introducing a competing bill. Murphy later told Defense News that if it hadn’t been for this sabotage, the Yemen War Powers Resolution would have passed the Senate in March, rather than in December. Shaheen’s public argument in March was: your bill will do nothing, because the Trump Pentagon has already said that they will ignore it if it passes, which claim was subsequently proved by events to be a spectacular lie; when the Trump Administration saw in November that the Senate was poised to pass the bill, they “unilaterally” ended the Pentagon refueling of Saudi warplanes bombing Yemen that the bill was designed to prohibit, without even waiting for the Senate to pass the bill. Jeanne Shaheen’s “private” argument to FCNL for why she would not support the bill in March was: your bill would set a bad precedent for Ukraine: if someone can use the War Powers Resolution to go after what the Executive Branch is doing in Yemen without Congressional authorization, then somebody else can use the War Powers Resolution to go after what the Executive Branch is doing in Ukraine without Congressional authorization. [In November, after the Saudi regime blew up a bus full of school children and claimed that it was a legitimate military target and Trump’s Secretary of State Pompeo nonetheless “certified” that the Saudis were working to reduce civilian casualties from their U.S.-enabled bombing, and also after the Saudi regime assassinated a U.S. resident Washington Post columnist and ostentatiously lied about it, Jeanne Shaheen switched sides and supported the Yemen War Powers Resolution.]
Let us re-examine Jeanne Shaheen’s “private” March 2018 claim against Yemen War Powers now, in the light of current events, and what we know about what the U.S. is doing in Ukraine now by reading the New York Times, in case cruel, heartless @StenyHoyer and his cruel, heartless henchmen try to use an excuse like this now against the Yemen War Powers Resolution.
According to the New York Times, the U.S. is already doing things in Ukraine covered by Section 8c of the War Powers Resolution. The U.S. is providing targeting information to the Ukraine military about the location of Russian military forces in Ukraine. So, according to the War Powers Resolution, this is unconstitutional because Congress never specifically authorized it, as required by Section 8a of the War Powers Resolution. And, according to the War Powers Resolution, any Member of Congress who is against the Biden Administration doing this in Ukraine now without Congressional authorization could, if they wanted, call the question now by invoking the War Powers Resolution to force a vote.
If Members of Congress don’t call the question now on this, it's not fundamentally a defect of the enforcement mechanism in the War Powers Resolution, which is a Congressional-complaint driven enforcement mechanism. Presumably Members of Congress are choosing not to call the question now on what the Biden Administration is doing in Ukraine now to participate in hostilities without specific Congressional authorization either because they support what the Biden Administration is doing, or because they expect they would be crushed like a tiny bug in a floor vote, because they believe that there is overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress now for what the Biden Administration is doing in Ukraine now.
So in the world in which we actually live right now, there’s no such animal as setting a “bad precedent” for unauthorized U.S. military intervention in other countries by invoking the War Powers Resolution to force a floor vote, if we have the votes to make a good showing. The enforcement of the War Powers Resolution in the world in which we live is complaint-driven, like a noise ordinance or a “No Trespassing” sign. In the world in which we live now, if no Member of Congress can be found to complain, the War Powers Resolution is not an obstacle to anything. If some Member of Congress wants to complain, the War Powers Resolution can be enforced.
The political argument for calling the question on Yemen War Powers now is that if we can call the question, we can win, because Congress voted this way before, and every time we called the question on this in the House before, we won the vote, no matter which party was occupying the Oval Office.