The Broken Clock in the Senate

I never thought I’d be saying this. I really didn’t. If you had told me five years ago that I would be using this platform to publicly agree with the Senator from Kentucky, I would have checked your coffee for hallucinogens.

But here we are. The sky is falling, the Middle East is burning, and Rand Paul is right.

This war in Iran is illegal. It is a staggering, unconstitutional overreach by an executive branch that has completely gone rogue. And even if we could somehow torture the text of the Constitution into making it legal, which we can’t, it is entirely too expensive. We simply cannot afford it.

Let’s start with the law, because apparently, that’s a quaint historical artifact in Washington these days. According to Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution, Congress, not the President, not the Secretary of Defense, and certainly not a chatbot in the Pentagon, has the sole power to declare war. It is not ambiguous. The Founders specifically stripped the war-making power from the executive because they had just finished fighting a king who treated human lives like poker chips.

Yet last week, when Senator Tim Kaine put forward a War Powers Resolution to force Donald Trump to seek congressional approval for "Operation Epic Fury," the Senate voted it down 47-53.

And who was the only Republican to stand up and say "no" to this imperial presidency? Rand Paul.

He stood on the floor of the Senate and said, “The constitutional separation of war powers is not just some notion that belongs in our history books. It’s a vital part of a democratic republic. This Congress should be ashamed.”

He is absolutely right. They should be humiliated. We have a Congress so devoid of ambition, so terrified of a primary challenge or a mean post on Truth Social, that they are willingly handing their most solemn constitutional duty over to the White House for the sake of "plausible deniability." They want the political cover of not voting for a war, while letting the President wage it anyway. It is cowardice masquerading as statesmanship.

And then there is the cost.

As reported by Democracy Now! and the Associated Press, we are already looking at over 1,100 Iranians dead, including 165 children in a single school bombing, and six American service members killed in action. That is the human cost, and it is unforgivable.

But let's talk about the financial cost, because that is the only language this administration seems to understand. We are firing Tomahawk missiles that cost $2 million apiece at fuel depots, which in turn spikes the global price of oil to over $90 a barrel. Who pays for that? You do. You pay for it at the gas pump, you pay for it at the grocery store, and you pay for it when your taxes are funneled to defense contractors whose former executives are conveniently sitting in the Pentagon.

We are watching a President unilaterally drain the American treasury to fight a war of choice that nobody asked for, and the "fiscally conservative" Republican party is cheering him on. We can't afford to fix our own bridges, we can't afford to keep our own hospitals open, but we apparently have a blank check to turn Tehran into a parking lot.

Even if this war were somehow legal, even if Congress had done its job and voted for it, it would still be a catastrophic waste of American resources. We cannot afford to police the globe, let alone randomly set it on fire just to see what happens.

So yes, the libertarian from Kentucky is the only guy on his side of the aisle making any sense. When Rand Paul is the sole voice of constitutional sanity in the Republican Party, you know the institution is completely morally bankrupt.

He is right. The war is illegal. We can’t afford it. And if the rest of Congress doesn't wake up soon, there won't be an economy or a Constitution left to save.


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