Representative Tom Barrett, a 22-year Army veteran now serving in Congress, is pressing lawmakers to reassert constitutional control over the use of military force — arguing that without structural reform, the United States risks repeating two decades of open-ended conflict that cost a generation of service members their lives, their health, or their futures.
Barrett's Reform Package Targets Dormant Authorizations and Mission Creep
Barrett has introduced a bipartisan reform plan that would repeal at least one remaining dormant authorization for the use of military force and require future authorizations to be reapproved by Congress at least every five years. The legislation would also give Congress additional tools to quickly and clearly define the mission after a president uses force to respond to an urgent threat — an attempt to prevent the kind of slow-expanding commitments that Barrett argues have defined American military engagement since 2001.
The proposal follows a vote Barrett cast in his first year in Congress to repeal the 2002 authorization for use of military force in Iraq — nearly 17 years after he returned from his own deployment there. Barrett describes it as the first time in his life that Congress successfully repealed an authorization for use of military force.
The Constitutional Argument: Congress Must Consent
Barrett's case rests on a straightforward reading of the Constitution: only Congress can declare war and authorize the use of military force. The War Powers Act, passed in 1973, delegated some of that authority to the president for up to 60 days before Congress must give its consent for a conflict to continue. When that 60-day window expired in the conflict with Iran, Barrett said he felt compelled to enforce it.
His position on Iran is unambiguous — Iran must never obtain a nuclear weapon — but he argues that decisions of this magnitude demand the highest level of constitutional scrutiny and cannot be made without the explicit involvement of the people's representatives.
Veterans' Costs Inform Barrett's Legislative Push
Barrett draws on specific losses to anchor the argument against drift. Staff Sergeant Duane Dreasky, his friend and roommate during a deployment to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for Operation Enduring Freedom, was struck by an improvised explosive device in Iraq and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery — three miles from where Barrett now casts his votes in Congress. Other friends were lost to suicide or overdose.
Barrett argues that with no military draft for more than 50 years, most Americans feel insulated from the consequences of war, while an entire generation of Global War on Terror veterans understands those consequences precisely because they lived them. That asymmetry, in his view, makes it easier for the country to normalize open-ended conflict and harder for Congress to summon the will to set clear limits.
The argument is not that force should never be used. It is that force applied with clear, unambiguous objectives — and subject to genuine congressional oversight — is far more likely to achieve its aims quickly and decisively than force deployed without defined limits and left to expand on its own momentum.