From Those Who Spend to Those Who Pay

To the People of the United States:

In No. 2, The Burthen We Ought to Bear, I quoted a letter Jefferson wrote to Madison from Paris in September 1789, the one that holds that the earth belongs to the living and that no generation may bind the next with its debts. In the same letter he praised a second check, on war. This paper is about that one.

1. The pain point today

On February 28, 2026, American and Israeli forces began striking Iran. A ceasefire began April 7. A memorandum of understanding signed in June expired in August, and limited strikes resumed. As of mid-September, 18 Americans had been killed and 824 wounded. The Congressional Budget Office put the military cost at $38 billion by August 1. ¹

Congress never voted to begin it. It has voted, again and again, about whether to stop it. In June a concurrent resolution directing an end passed both chambers, 215 to 208 in the House and 50 to 48 in the Senate. A second failed in the Senate in September, 49 to 50. A third passed the House the same month. ¹ Whether a concurrent resolution binds anyone is itself in doubt, because the Supreme Court cast doubt on that mechanism in INS v. Chadha in 1983. ²

This is not one President’s habit. Since 2011, Presidents of both parties have used force without a new vote of Congress: in Libya, in Syria, against Iran. ¹³ From 1975 to March 2017, Presidents sent Congress 168 reports under the War Powers Resolution. Exactly one cited the section that starts its 60-day clock. ³

The longest war of the period ran twenty years on a single authorization voted in 2001. It ended at Kabul’s airport in August 2021, where an Islamic State bomber killed 13 American service members and more than 150 Afghans. ⁴

2. What they warned

The Constitution’s text is short. Congress has the power “To declare War” ✓ verified, Q01. Congress raises armies, “but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years” ✓ verified, Q02. And “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States” ✓ verified, Q03.

On August 17, 1787, the Convention argued over those words, and Madison’s notes record it. Pierce Butler of South Carolina “was for vesting the power in the President, who will have all the requisite qualities, and will not make war but when the Nation will support it.” ✓ verified, Q04 Madison and Elbridge Gerry moved to change “make” war to “declare” war, “leaving to the Executive the power to repel sudden attacks” ✓ verified, Q05. Gerry said he “never expected to hear in a republic a motion to empower the Executive alone to declare war.” ✓ verified, Q06 Oliver Ellsworth put the principle in one line: “It shd be more easy to get out of war, than into it” ✓ verified, Q07. George Mason “was for clogging rather than facilitating war; but for facilitating peace.” ✓ verified, Q08 Butler lost. The design was settled: the President repels, Congress decides.

Hamilton sold that design to New York. The President’s command, he wrote in The Federalist No. 69, “would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces … while that of the British king extends to the DECLARING of war and to the RAISING and REGULATING of fleets and armies, all which, by the Constitution under consideration, would appertain to the legislature.” ✓ verified, Q09

The Anti-Federalist Cato doubted the paper line would hold. The British king had the express power of war and peace, he wrote, yet “never thinks it prudent to do so without the advice of his Parliament, from whom he is to derive his support, and therefore these powers, in both president and king, are substantially the same” ✓ verified, Q10.

In that letter of 1789, Jefferson praised the choice in a single sentence: “We have already given, in example, one effectual check to the dog of war, by transferring the power of declaring war from the executive to the legislative body, from those who are to spend, to those who are to pay.” ✓ verified, Q11

In 1793 the two authors of The Federalist split. Defending Washington’s neutrality proclamation as Pacificus, Hamilton argued that “The general doctrine of our Constitution, then, is, that the executive power of the nation is vested in the President; subject only to the exceptions and qualifications which are expressed in the instrument.” ✓ verified, Q12 He granted that Congress remained free to decide, “though the executive, in the exercise of its constitutional powers, may establish an antecedent state of things, which ought to weigh in the legislative decisions.” ✓ verified, Q13 Madison answered as Helvidius. “In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found, than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department.” ✓ verified, Q14 And: “War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement.” ✓ verified, Q15

Hamilton’s antecedent state of things is exactly the danger: a President who acts first leaves Congress only the choice to ratify or abandon troops already in the field. Madison put it bluntly to Jefferson in 1798: “The constitution supposes, what the History of all Govts demonstrates, that the Ex. is the branch of power most interested in war, & most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the Legisl.” ✓ verified, Q16

Washington lived by the rule in 1793: “The Constitution vests the power of declaring war with Congress; therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject, and authorized such a measure.” ✓ verified, Q17 Even Hamilton, the strongest voice for executive power, wrote in 1801 that “it is the peculiar and exclusive province of Congress, when the nation is at peace, to change that state into a state of war” ✓ verified, Q18, while a nation attacked is “then by the very fact already at war” ✓ verified, Q18.

3. How it came true

Libya, 2011. The administration’s lawyers said no prior approval was needed because the operation served the national interest and was not “war” given its “anticipated nature, scope, and duration” brief. In June the administration told Congress the campaign involved no “sustained fighting or active exchanges of fire” brief, so it was not “hostilities” and the 60-day clock never started. On June 24 the House voted down a resolution authorizing the campaign, 123 to 295, and voted down a bill cutting off its funds, 180 to 238. ³ Congress would neither approve the war nor stop it.

Syria and ISIS, 2014 to 2018. In 2014 the campaign against the Islamic State began under the 2001 and 2002 authorizations. No law aimed at the Islamic State was ever passed, and the next administration relied on the same authority. In 2017 it struck a Syrian airfield without statutory authorization, and in 2018 it struck three chemical weapons sites with 105 missiles. Its lawyers applied the same “nature, scope, and duration” brief test that the prior administration’s lawyers had written for Libya. ³ One party built the tool. The other party used it. This is Washington’s alternate domination, which I traced through the Senate’s rules in No. 1, carried into the gravest decision a government makes.

Iran, 2020 to 2026. In January 2020 a drone strike killed the commander of Iran’s Quds Force. The required notice to Congress was classified in full, and it cited the 2002 Iraq authorization. Congress passed a joint resolution to restrain further hostilities; it was vetoed, and the override failed, 49 to 44. In 2021 the next President struck militia sites in Syria, citing his own constitutional authority and self-defense. ¹ That 2002 law was finally repealed in December 2025, twenty-three years after it passed. In 2025 American forces struck Iran’s nuclear sites, and later struck boats said to carry drugs; motions and resolutions to stop them failed in the Senate by margins of 6, 3 and 2 votes, and in the House by 6 and 2. ¹ Then came 2026.

Afghanistan, 2001 to 2021. One administration signed the 2020 agreement with the Taliban that set the exit; the next carried it out in 2021. A State Department review found that the decisions of both Presidents “had serious consequences” brief for the Afghan government, and that “during both administrations there was insufficient senior-level consideration of worst-case scenarios.” brief The Defense Department obligated $837.3 billion for operations and reconstruction in Afghanistan through March 2021. ⁴ It began with one authorization vote. It never had another.

4. The choke point

Why does a design this clear fail this often? Because every actor in the system is rewarded for letting it fail.

Congress would rather not own the vote. A vote to authorize a war can be blamed if it goes badly; a vote to stop one can be blamed if it ends badly. Silence is safer, and a speech safer still. Justice Jackson saw it in 1952: “congressional inertia, indifference or quiescence may sometimes, at least as a practical matter, enable, if not invite, measures on independent presidential responsibility.” ✓ verified, Q19

The burden has flipped. Ellsworth wanted it easier to get out of war than into it. After Chadha, a President can begin hostilities alone, and Congress needs a two-thirds vote of both chambers to end them over a veto. The 2020 override failed 49 to 44. The founders built a clog on going in. We have built a clog on getting out.

Old permissions never expire. An authorization against the September 11 attackers was used thirteen years later against the Islamic State. An authorization for Iraq in 2002 was cited against Iran in 2020. In my forthcoming No-America I have a name for a decision that never faced its forum: “The claim did not lose the forum. It skipped it.” ✓ verified, S1 A war fought on a stale authorization did not lose a vote in Congress. It skipped one.

The deciders are far from the cost. I wrote in No-America that “the strongest country in the world sends its young men and women to die for reasons most citizens cannot verify, decided by people they will never meet, and they trust them. That is the size of the deposit.” ✓ verified, S2 While my brother was serving in Fallujah, a wealthy man told my father he had too much money for his son ever to join the military. I drew the lesson there: “The military should never be under the practical control of those with money, those with power, and those with influence.” ✓ verified, S3 Jefferson’s phrase, from those who spend to those who pay, was about exactly this distance.

Each side looks away when its own President holds the power. Both parties’ Presidents have made the same claims, and both parties’ lawyers have written the same tests. It is the trust swing of No. 1 in another key: the same act, judged by the jersey of the person who ordered it. I call the missing virtue civic courage, because “applying a standard to opponents is free, while applying it to allies is billed in currencies like belonging, status, identity, and tribe.” ✓ verified, S4

5. The fix and the prevention

The text already says Congress. Most of the repair is statutory.

1. Make the clock real. Amend the War Powers Resolution to define hostilities to include air and missile strikes, drone strikes and strikes at sea, whether or not Americans are fired upon. Start the clock at the first strike. Trade-off: a strict definition can catch rescue missions and short defensive actions; the statute should carve those out by name, not by lawyers’ later reading.

2. Let the purse do what a veto blocks. Write into the standing defense appropriations law that no funds may be spent on hostilities beyond 60 days unless Congress has authorized them. Then the default is stop, and it takes a law to continue, not a law to end. Trade-off: a cutoff while troops are engaged carries real risk, and the executive branch will contest it. Write a wind-down period in advance. I take up the purse in full in No. 7.

3. Sunset every authorization. No authorization for the use of force should run longer than two years without a new recorded vote, the same limit the Constitution puts on money for armies. Each should name the enemy, the place and the purpose. Trade-off: adversaries can read the calendar, and repeated votes can become rubber stamps. A rubber stamp with names on it still beats no vote.

4. Guarantee the vote, and publish the reason. Any member should be able to force a floor vote within a fixed number of days on any resolution to authorize or end hostilities, and the legal theory behind any strike should be public within days. The 2020 notice was classified in full. Trade-off: this forces hard votes in election years, and some legal reasoning touches sources and methods. Redact those. Force the votes. That is the point.

5. Pay for war as you wage it. In the same 1798 letter in which he wished to take the borrowing power from the federal government, which I quoted in No. 2, Jefferson warned that borrowing makes war easy: “I know that to pay all proper expences within the year, would, in case of war, be hard on us. But not so hard as ten wars instead of one.” ✓ verified, Q20 A dedicated war tax or offset for operations past a set length would make the cost visible to those who pay. Trade-off: as I granted in No. 2, The Federalist rightly warned that great wars require loans, and no one should starve troops in the field. Apply it to discretionary operations, not to defense against invasion.

6. An amendment, only if statutes fail. A war powers amendment could provide that any use of force lasting beyond 60 days lapses unless both chambers approve it by majority vote, with no veto. Trade-off: it would settle the Chadha problem for good, but it reopens the war clause itself, and a definition written for today’s weapons may not fit tomorrow’s.

7. What you can do. Find out how your Representative and Senators voted on each war powers resolution named above. Ask them, in writing, whether they would vote the same way if the other party’s President had ordered the strike. If you are a veteran or from a military or Gold Star family, your voice carries a weight no lobbyist has. Use it in the forum. My rule applies here before anywhere: “Dissent and discourse must control, or destruction will.” ✓ verified, S5

6. The strongest objection, and the answer

The objection. The world no longer waits for Congress. Missiles fly in minutes, and terror networks do not declare war. Congress is slow and divided, and Presidents of both parties have concluded that the Commander in Chief must be able to act. And Congress keeps funding the operations, which is approval in fact.

The answer. The founders kept the power to repel sudden attacks, and nothing here touches it. Hamilton’s own rule draws the line: a nation attacked is already at war, but a nation at peace goes to war only by the decision of Congress. Much of the record above was not the repelling of an attack in progress: Libya in 2011 enforced a United Nations resolution, and the Syria strikes of 2017 and 2018 followed a sarin attack and targeted chemical weapons sites. Speed argues for notice, not for permission to skip the vote.

Funding is not consent. A defense budget pays for the whole military, not for a particular war, and the Constitution asks for a decision, not an inference. A Congress that does not want the responsibility is the disease, not the cure. Ellsworth wanted war hard to enter and easy to leave. Afghanistan shows what the reverse costs: one vote in 2001, four Presidents, two parties, and a review that faulted both administrations.

7. Questions for the Candlelight

1. Ellsworth said it should be easier to get out of war than into it. Is that true today? What would make it true again?
2. Pacificus or Helvidius: which of them would recognize our present practice, and why?
3. If the President you most distrust ordered a strike tomorrow on the same legal theory your own party’s President used, would your answer change? Should it?
4. Jefferson wanted the power to make war held by “those who are to pay.” ✓ verified, Q11 Who pays for our wars today, in blood and in money, and how much say do they have?
5. What do we owe the families of the 13 service members killed at Abbey Gate in the way of a public accounting, and who should give it?

Source notes

1. CRS R46148; GovInfo bill status for S.J.Res. 68 (116th), H.R. 256 (117th), S. 316 (118th), S. 1071, S.J.Res. 83, S.J.Res. 90, H.Con.Res. 61, H.Con.Res. 64, S.J.Res. 185, H.Con.Res. 86, H.Con.Res. 89, H.Con.Res. 93 (119th); Public Law 119-60, sec. 8370; U.S. Senate Periodical Press Gallery (2025-06-27); CRS R48887, “U.S. Conflict with Iran” (updated 2026-09-18), for casualties and the CBO cost estimate; Roll Call (2025-12-24); NBC News (2026-06-23). Via brief 08, “War powers: Iran, the Iraq AUMFs and strikes at sea.”
2. INS v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919 (1983), as summarized in briefs 07 and 08.
3. CRS R42699, “The War Powers Resolution: Concepts and Practice” (2019), for the 168 reports; CRS RL33142; House Roll Calls 411, 412, 493 and 494 (2011); Senate Foreign Relations Committee, S. Hrg. 112-89 (2011-06-28), quoting the 2011-06-15 report; Office of Legal Counsel opinions of 2011-04-01 (Libya) and 2018-05-31 (Syria); GlobalSecurity.org (Shayrat strike). Via brief 07, “War powers: Libya, Syria and the campaign against ISIS.” Accounts differ on the Shayrat missile count (58 or 59).
4. CRS R46879 (updated 2021-09-17); U.S. Department of State, “After Action Review on Afghanistan, January 2020 - August 2021” (March 2022). Via brief 09, “The withdrawal from Afghanistan.”
5. Supporting answer already published on The Seat: “How should the United States act toward Britain and France in the 1790s?” https://civicrealism-ask-api.vercel.app/api/job?id=0d7461ded24f732b ; “How strong should the executive be?” https://civicrealism-ask-api.vercel.app/api/job?id=22dbad69747d3d09

Founding-era, constitutional and judicial quotations are verified word for word against the Civic Realism founders corpus (passage ids in the table below). Spelling and abbreviations follow the edition in the corpus, including Madison’s note-taking shorthand (“shd,” “Govts,” “Ex.,” “Legisl.”) and Jefferson’s “expences.” Convention speeches are as recorded in Madison’s notes, not verbatim transcripts of the speakers.

[S1-S5] Shawn Cosner, No-America (forthcoming; Reading Edition v1.2, unpublished manuscript, 2026).

Quotation verification

How this was checked: every quotation in the body was run through the Founders engine quote check (engine/quotecheck.py, check()) against the cited passage text on the Spark, CPU only, on 2026-10-06: 32 of 32 quotation instances passed (22 from the founders corpus, 5 from No-America and 5 from briefs 07 and 09), 0 failed. My own quotations were checked by the same function against the No-America manuscript line cited; the Office of Legal Counsel, 2011 report and State Department wording against the texts of briefs 07 and 09.

Verified but cut for length: Brutus No. 8 on the power to raise armies; Jay, The Federalist No. 4, on monarchs who make war for personal ends; Helvidius on “the public treasures” being unlocked. Not used because not clean: the J.C. Hamilton (OCR) printing of Pacificus No. I; the Lodge edition was used instead.