A House Resolution Waiting on the Senate

The House adopted H.Con.Res. 93 on 15 September by 220 votes to 204, and the Senate received it the next day. Congress.gov records it as referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations on 16 September, and records nothing since. The Senate stands adjourned until 3 p.m. on Monday 9 November, apart from pro forma sessions at which no business is expected.

The resolution, sponsored by Rep. Seth Moulton, directs the President under section 5(c) of the War Powers Resolution to remove United States armed forces from hostilities with Iran. Seven Republicans voted for it, according to the House roll call: Tom Barrett, Warren Davidson, Brian Fitzpatrick, Nancy Mace, Thomas Massie, Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Zach Nunn. On the House’s two earlier Iran resolutions this year, four Republicans had voted yes.

It is easy to confuse with the measure the Senate did vote on. On Thursday 24 September the Senate rejected H.Con.Res. 89, the resolution the House had adopted in July by 214 to 208, by 49 votes to 50. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul and Thom Tillis voted with the Democrats; John Fetterman voted no and Angela Alsobrooks did not vote. H.Con.Res. 93 was not before the Senate that day.

The clock in the statute

The Senate’s obligations are in 50 U.S.C. 1546(c). A concurrent resolution passed by one chamber is referred to the other chamber’s committee, which is to report it “within fifteen calendar days.” It then becomes the pending business and is to be voted on “within three calendar days,” unless the chamber “shall otherwise determine by yeas and nays.” Counting from the 16 September referral, the fifteenth day was 1 October and the three-day window closed on 4 October. Those are this publication’s calculations.

The Senate has not run its Iran votes on that clock. The record for H.Con.Res. 89 shows it referred on 23 July and the committee discharged on 24 September “under the order of 8/8/26”, a gap of 63 days. The record for H.Con.Res. 86, which the House adopted on 3 June, shows the committee discharged on 23 June “pursuant to the order of 06/18/2026.” In both cases the timing was set by a Senate order rather than by the statute’s fifteen days. No such order appears in the record for H.Con.Res. 93.

What passage would and would not do

If the Senate adopted H.Con.Res. 93, nothing would go to the White House. “As a concurrent resolution, it wouldn’t have been presented to the president for his signature and couldn’t have been vetoed,” CBS News wrote of the 24 September measure, adding that “administrations of both parties have argued for decades that the process is unconstitutional and cannot bind the president.” Scott R. Anderson put it more flatly in Lawfare: “A concurrent resolution, meanwhile, never has the force of law, even when fully enacted.”

The Senate has already done this once. It adopted H.Con.Res. 86 on 23 June by 50 votes to 48, which CBS described as a symbolic rebuke of the President. A second adoption would put the Senate where it was in June.

The version with force of law

A joint resolution is the form that goes to the President. Anderson wrote in June that one passing both chambers “is almost certain to be vetoed by the president” and “seems unlikely to have the two-thirds support necessary to override.” He also explained the House’s choice of form: “The House focuses on concurrent resolutions because these are the only measures for which it has expedited procedures.”

The override arithmetic is easy to state. An override needs two-thirds of those voting. On 15 September 424 House members voted, so two-thirds would have been 283, and 220 is 63 short. On 24 September 99 senators voted, so two-thirds would have been 66, and 49 is 17 short. These are this publication’s calculations from the roll calls, and they assume the same attendance.

What is on the calendar

The Senate Press Gallery lists pro forma sessions on 13, 15, 19, 22, 26 and 29 October and on 2 and 5 November. When the Senate returns on 9 November, the only scheduled business is the motion to proceed to H.R. 2347, the vehicle for a permitting bill, with a cloture vote at about 5:30 p.m. H.Con.Res. 93 is not on that schedule, and the published schedule does not say whether or when a vote on it will be forced. An earlier piece set out why the House version of this procedure keeps producing votes; the Senate version, so far, has produced them when the Senate agreed to.

The resolution has now been in the Senate for 25 days. The statute allowed its committee fifteen.

Sources

The action histories of H.Con.Res. 86, 89 and 93 are from Congress.gov. The House votes are from the Clerk’s roll calls, and the 24 September Senate vote from Senate roll call 244. The statutory deadlines are from 50 U.S.C. 1546(c). The descriptions of concurrent resolutions are from CBS News and from Scott R. Anderson’s analysis in Lawfare. The Senate schedule is from the Senate Press Gallery. The day counts and override arithmetic are this publication’s.