Kaine: Congress can't give away war authority

By Charles Hoskinson, Charles Hoskinson

Published December 20, 2015

Sen. Tim Kaine isn't giving up on the push to formally authorize the U.S. war against the Islamic State, even though congressional leaders have no interest in the idea and the Obama administration says it has all the authority it needs.

"We could do this," he told the Washington Examiner. "We're going to have to have a hard discussion and trade ideas and have a markup and put in amendments and vote on it."

The Virginia Democrat is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which had a classified briefing on Syria on Tuesday from Brett McGurk, the administration's coordinator for the international coalition fighting the Islamic State, where the issue came up.

In June, Kaine and Republican Jeff Flake of Arizona teamed up to offer legislation that would authorize U.S. military operations against the Islamic State for three years. But there's no enthusiasm among congressional leaders to take up the legislation.