Nancy Pelosi: Congress Should Return To Vote On War

WASHINGTON -- Congress should return from its long election break and vote on President Barack Obama's authority to go to war against extremists in Iraq and Syria, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Wednesday. Obama launched strikes on the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, starting in early August, and will have been waging a wide-ranging military campaign against the militant group for more than three months before Congress returns from the campaign trail in mid-November. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has said Obama has the authority to wage the war, but that as speaker he would bring the House back to vote on a specific authorization to use military force sooner if the president proposed such a measure. Pelosi, who also said the White House has the authority to take the actions it has, nevertheless declared Wednesday that Boehner was wrong and that Congress, which under the Constitution has the responsibility to declare war, should be the body to draw up such an authorization. "If you want to define an authorization, which defines, to use the word again, the authority that you're giving the president, you don't wait for the president to write it," Pelosi told reporters at a Capitol Hill news conference.