At any time during this tug-of-war, lawmakers may agree to prompt an early poll.
Several anti-war lawmakers, meanwhile, have heightened their calls for a more precipitous withdrawal of troops -- the process of which is set to begin in July 2011.
It had been nearly three days into the government shutdown, and the political paralysis brought on by warring lawmakers in Washington, D.C., had begun seeping into her life.
The joint resolution fell short of a full declaration of war, which lawmakers said would have been inappropriate in military action against a shadowy enemy.
Even in France, where President François Hollande wields executive power to send his forces to war, opposition lawmakers clamored — albeit in vain — for the right to vote on a French deployment when they debated the issue on Wednesday.
Following World War II, lawmakers forged a pacifist constitution.
In the final years of the Civil War, Union lawmakers debated various proposals for Reconstruction.
In 1985, at the height of the international drug war, Indian lawmakers imposed strict criminal penalties, including long jail terms, for errors in tracking opioids.
WASHINGTON -- Tough talk is cheap, and so are votes to go to war if lawmakers and most of their constituents don't suffer any consequences, said Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y). in an interview with The Huffington Post last week.
The Constitution requires Congress to declare wars, but lawmakers, reluctant to have their fingerprints on a war that could go awry, have shown little interest in passing a new AUMF for the Islamic State.
