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Representative Tom Barrett, a 22-year Army veteran now serving in Congress, is pressing lawmakers to reassert constitutional control over the use of military force — arguing that without structural reform, the United States risks repeating two decades of open-ended conflict that cost a generation of service members their lives, their health, or their futures.
Barrett's Reform Package Targets Dormant Authorizations and Mission Creep Barrett has introduced a bipartisan reform plan that would repeal at least one remaining dormant authorization for the use of military force and require future authorizations to be reapproved by Congress at least every five years.
The legislation would also give Congress additional tools to quickly and clearly define the mission after a president uses force to respond to an urgent threat — an attempt to prevent the kind of slow-expanding commitments that Barrett argues have defined American military engagement since 2001.
The proposal follows a vote Barrett cast in his first year in Congress to repeal the 2002 authorization for use of military force in Iraq — nearly 17 years after he returned from his own deployment there.
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