A Christmas Shutdown Is the Wrong Way to Fight Over Iran. The Constitution Offers a Better One.

Four Senate Democrats have drawn a line that could close the federal government two weeks before Christmas. In a joint statement, Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Michael Bennet of Colorado, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Tammy Duckworth of Illinois said any short-term funding package must include language barring the administration from using appropriated money to continue the war with Iran, and that they will not accept a stopgap that provides billions more for it. "We must end President Trump's illegal and disastrous war with Iran," they wrote.

The stakes are real. Government funding runs out Dec. 11, and any stopgap needs Democratic votes to clear the Senate's 60-vote threshold, South Dakota Searchlight reported. Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said Democrats will not approve the tens of billions of dollars in added war funding the administration requested over the summer. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, her House counterpart, has said Democrats will absolutely not fund the war, according to The Washington Sun.

Let me be fair to the senators. Their statement points to higher costs for gas, groceries and fertilizer, and to more than 20 American service members killed and hundreds wounded. Those are serious concerns, and every one of those fallen Americans deserves our prayers and our gratitude. Polling also shows the war has lost support: a Reuters/Ipsos survey this month found 71% of Americans want Congress to pass legislation ending it.

Democrats are right that Congress holds the purse. The Constitution says no money shall be drawn from the Treasury "but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law". It gives Congress the power to declare war and to raise and support armies, with no appropriation for the Army lasting more than two years. It also makes the president commander in chief.

The Framers built that balance on purpose. They gave Congress the power to fund or not fund a war through deliberate, accountable votes. They did not design a system in which much of the government closes its doors, and service members are left wondering about their paychecks, to settle one policy fight on a stopgap bill. Using a shutdown deadline as the lever turns a serious constitutional question into a hostage standoff.

Progressives say they are reviving a Vietnam-era strategy. Van Hollen has discussed a proposal modeled on a 1973 measure that barred funds for the Vietnam War, The Washington Sun reported. But the history cuts the other way. The Paris Peace Agreement of January 1973 brought the final withdrawal of American military forces from Vietnam, and the Case-Church Amendment, which passed the Senate 63-26 that June, barred future use of U.S. forces in Southeast Asia without congressional approval. In other words, Congress acted after American forces had left Vietnam, and even then it gave the remaining air campaign in Cambodia until Aug. 15 to wind down. That is a far cry from cutting off money on a few weeks' notice for forces still deployed in a war the president says will continue.

Reuters noted that if a future Democratic Congress attached such restrictions and the president vetoed them, the result could be a shutdown with potentially no pay for the troops themselves. That is a risk no one who loves this country should want to take.

Republicans are not budging. House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole of Oklahoma said a Republican Congress is not going to send the president bills he will veto, meaning Democrats' demand would have to wait until next year, Reuters reported. Even some Democrats are uneasy. The Washington Sun reported that some in the party worry a December shutdown would weaken their leverage in January, and that Democrats forced two shutdown fights in the past year and failed both times. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries has said he does not want to get out ahead of DeLauro on the question.

There is a better way, and it is only weeks off. The new Congress, with Democratic majorities in both chambers, will be sworn in Jan. 3. It can hold hearings, write the annual defense bill, which has passed every year since 1961, and vote openly on the war's funding and authority. That is regular order. It is how a free people argues about war.

Keep the lights on Dec. 11. Pay the troops. Then let the people's representatives settle the hardest question a nation faces the way the Constitution intends: in the open, on the record, and without holding the rest of the government hostage.