WASHINGTON — The House passed the bipartisan war-powers overhaul Wednesday morning on a 294-138 vote, sending the legislation to the President’s desk after the Senate cleared the bill on a 71-26 vote Tuesday evening, capping a six-week legislative cycle that began with the May 8 introduction by Senator Tim Kaine and Senator Todd Young.

The House passage occurred at 10:48 a.m. Eastern under a structured-amendment rule that had been finalized by the Rules Committee Tuesday evening. The substantive content of the Senate-passed bill survived the House process without modification, with several Republican-offered substantive amendments having been defeated in narrow party-line votes during the Wednesday morning amendment debate.

The bipartisan character of the final vote was notable in its breadth. One hundred sixty-four Democrats and one hundred thirty Republicans voted in favor; one hundred twenty-eight Republicans and ten Democrats voted against. The roll-call breakdown represented the broadest bipartisan support for any substantial restructuring of executive war-powers authorities since the War Powers Resolution of 1973.

Speaker Mike Johnson, in floor remarks delivered immediately after the vote, characterized the overhaul as “a thoughtful restoration of congressional war-powers authorities consistent with the spirit of the constitutional framework.” Johnson said he had “voted for the bill because the bill’s drafters had done the work to make it both principled and operationally workable” and that the House would deliver the bill to the President “in a posture of constructive expectation.”

Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, in floor remarks following Johnson’s, said the vote “answers a question this Congress has been asked since the first weeks of the Iran conflict.” Jeffries credited Senator Kaine and Senator Young for what he called “the most important bipartisan legislative partnership of the past decade” and said the bill’s substantive provisions reflected the kind of careful drafting work that “the public has wanted to see from Congress on national-security questions.”

Representative Don Bacon, R-Neb., who had been the principal House Republican voice in support of the overhaul during the bill’s six-week trajectory, said in floor remarks that the bill represented “the substantive constitutional restoration our caucus has been called to support since the war began.” Bacon credited the discharge-petition pressure of early May for accelerating the House’s engagement with the bill but said the broader Republican vote reflected genuine substantive conviction rather than procedural pressure.

The administration’s response to the House passage was measured. The White House press secretary, in a Wednesday-morning Rose Garden statement, said the President “respects the work Congress has done on this question” and would “evaluate the bill’s substantive provisions” before determining whether to sign or veto. The press secretary acknowledged that the bill’s bipartisan structure would inform the President’s substantive evaluation.

A senior administration official, in a Wednesday-morning background briefing for Washington reporters, said the President’s decision on the bill would be made within the constitutional ten-day window following presentment. The official said the administration had specific substantive concerns about several of the bill’s provisions but indicated that the substantive concerns “would be carefully weighed” against the institutional value of the bipartisan congressional product.

Senator Kaine, in a Wednesday-morning Capitol Hill statement, characterized the House vote as “the legislative complement to the substantive Senate work” and said the bill’s six-week trajectory had been “the most meaningful legislative experience” of his Senate career. Kaine credited the bipartisan partnership with Senator Young as “the model for what the Senate can do when the right partnership presents itself” and indicated that he and Senator Young were already engaged in early discussions about follow-on legislation on related national-security questions.

Senator Young, in a parallel Wednesday-morning statement, said the bill represented “Republican constitutional doctrine applied to the realities of the contemporary national-security framework.” Young said his motivation throughout the bill’s development had been “to ensure that this Congress did not let the Iran conflict pass without addressing the institutional questions the conflict had raised.”

The bill’s substantive provisions, as enacted, include a tightened reporting requirement covering executive-branch military operations, an expedited congressional-review procedure for operations exceeding sixty days, and a substantive update to the Authorization for Use of Military Force framework that had governed counterterrorism operations since 2001. The 2001 AUMF is repealed at the bill’s effective date, with the new AUMF framework taking its place under provisions that specify the new framework’s scope and the procedural framework for any future congressional expansions.

The repeal of the 2001 AUMF, which had been the most politically sensitive provision of the bill’s substantive content, had been preserved through both the Senate and House floor processes despite multiple amendments seeking to soften the repeal. The provision’s survival reflects what several legislative observers characterized as the substantive shift in Republican congressional thinking about executive-branch counterterrorism authorities during the past three years.

A senior House Foreign Affairs Committee staff member, contacted Wednesday morning for background, said the bill’s substantive provisions had been “extensively coordinated” between the committee staff and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff during the bill’s development. The staff member noted that the substantive coordination had been the principal factor in preserving the bill’s bipartisan structure through the floor process.

A senior Defense Department legal official, asked Wednesday morning about the implementation framework for the bill if enacted, said the department had been “preparing operational protocols” for both the signing and veto outcomes during the past two weeks. The official said the department’s implementation planning had been informed by extensive consultation with Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff and that the operational implementation would proceed on a defined timeline following any presidential signing.

The Senate’s leadership, in a joint Wednesday-morning statement issued by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader John Thune, expressed appreciation for the House’s substantive work and indicated that the Senate would consider any future related legislation on a timeline appropriate to the substantive priorities of the chamber. The joint statement is the first such bipartisan leadership statement issued by the Senate’s leadership pair since the first weeks of the post-war period.

The President’s ten-day decision window opens with the bill’s formal presentment Wednesday afternoon and runs through the end of the month. The administration’s substantive response will be one of the principal events shaping the political contours of late May and early June.