WASHINGTON — Sen. Cory Booker blasted both Democrats and Republicans after Congress failed last week to rein in President Donald Trump’s military campaign in Iran, arguing that lawmakers in both parties had let the White House absorb powers the Constitution reserves for Congress. In a Sunday interview, the New Jersey Democrat said the latest failed war-powers votes showed how thoroughly Capitol Hill has stopped acting as a check on presidents in matters of war, March 15, 2026.
In CNN’s March 15 transcript, Booker said “both parties have been feckless in allowing the growth of the power of the presidency,” while stressing that the current conflict is larger than the precedents lawmakers usually cite when they excuse unilateral military action. His point was not only that Republicans are protecting Trump, but that Congress as an institution has spent years surrendering ground and now looks unable to reclaim it.
Why Cory Booker says Congress failed its war-powers test
Booker’s frustration rests on two concrete defeats. The Senate’s March 4 roll call on S.J. Res. 104 rejected the motion to move the Iran war-powers measure forward, 53-47. One day later, the House’s vote on H. Con. Res. 38 failed 219-212. Together, the two votes left Trump’s campaign intact and showed how little bipartisan appetite exists for forcing a prior authorization vote once a president has already committed U.S. forces.
That debate has only sharpened since then. As The Associated Press reported this week, Republicans have resisted rapid public hearings even as Democrats threaten a stream of fresh floor votes to force debate. Booker told AP that Congress has had “no oversight whatsoever” while the executive branch keeps spending and fighting without a full public accounting.
The substance behind Booker’s warning is also growing harder to shrug off. According to a Reuters report on a closed-door briefing, the Trump administration told senators the war had already cost at least $11.3 billion in its first six days, with a much larger supplemental funding request expected later. For Booker and other critics, that combination of rising costs, U.S. casualties and unclear objectives is exactly why Congress is supposed to act before a conflict hardens into policy.
Republicans argue Trump acted within his commander-in-chief powers and say classified briefings, Pentagon updates and routine committee work already amount to oversight. That defense has held so far. Booker’s counterargument is that private briefings are not the same as a public case for war, and that votes after the shooting starts are weaker than authorization before the escalation begins.
Cory Booker and the longer war-powers pattern
Booker’s swipe at “both parties” lands because this fight did not begin with the March votes. In 2020, Congress actually cleared a similar Iran war-powers measure before Trump vetoed it, showing that even rare bipartisan pushback could still collapse once the issue reached the Oval Office.
The pattern resurfaced in June 2025, when the Senate again rejected an effort to require congressional approval for further hostilities against Iran. That continuity matters because it turns Booker’s complaint from a one-week talking point into a broader diagnosis: presidents escalate first, Congress complains later, and the institutional balance keeps moving toward the executive.
That does not mean Booker has the votes to reverse the pattern now. But his critique matters because it frames the Iran debate as something larger than one operation or one president. Unless Republicans agree to public hearings or a future war-powers vote attracts unexpected bipartisan support, last week’s failed resolutions will stand as the latest proof that Congress still talks about war powers as its own while increasingly acting as though they already belong to the White House.
