Congress will do nothing about it, but it's clear now that the president is in clear violation of the War Powers Resolution, and will be for the foreseeable future. It's worth recalling that the reason for the division of war-authority between legislative and executive reaches to what was the core of the American project: preventing the emergence of a king rather than a president. If a president could go to war whenever he wanted for as long as he wanted, the potential for abuse of power was immense. That has only deepened after the dictatorial precedent of the Bush administration. If a president can alone launch a war, alone determine who is an enemy combatant, and is empowered to do anything at home or abroad to fight that war, including seizing citizens on false charges and torturing them (as in the case of Jose Padilla), then we really do have a version of tyranny, and one far more pernicious than an individual healthcare mandate.
But nothing will happen. And some of the legislative ideas being bandied around are really odd:
Among those critical of the administration’s move, there was no clear consensus on how to react. Representative Chris Gibson, Republican of New York, proposed an overhaul of the war powers act that would prohibit presidents from using money to deploy the military into hostilities without prior permission from Congress, except in the case of an imminent attack on the United States or Israel or because of a treaty obligation.
The defense of Israel is now on a par with the the defense of the US?
The Dish 