Stop Congress from letting down Guard troops in our state

This probably only happens once in a red, white and blue moon or so.
This week, the Legislature’s House of Delegates voted twice in a row — 50-50 —on motions on the same bill. There are 100 members in the House, 41 Democrats and 59 Republicans.
That bill, the Defend the Guard Act’s (HB 2732) purpose is to require a declaration of war by Congress before members of the National Guard can be released from state control to participate in active duty combat.
This legislation has surfaced for several years in the Legislature and though it advanced out of committee to a second reading on the House floor last year, ultimately it was sidelined by House leadership.
For now, HB 2732 sits in the Veteran Affairs and Homeland Security Committee, a relatively minor committee.
The first motion Wednesday was to table the sponsor’s request to discharge HB 2732 to the House Judiciary Committee, a powerful panel. That motion failed as do all votes that end in a tie, including the second motion on this bill — to discharge it from the veterans committee to the House floor.
Though the yeas and nays for both motions broke along majorities that were partisan, surprisingly more than a dozen Republicans voted with the minority both times.
While a handful of Democrats voted with the majority party both times.
For the record, our newspaper supports HB 2732. National Guard units have been deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq, on and off since 2001 and 2003, respectively.
These are in every sense, as President Trump refers to them, “endless wars.” And although West Virginians have always loyally shouldered more than their share of troop strength abroad this is wrong.
It’s obvious that Congress has abdicated its duty to declare war, ceding absolute power to the president, who in turn has abused his authority over Guard units.
That thought is not just directed at President Trump, but at every Democratic and Republican administration since at least the 1950s, that have all engaged in this abuse of the Guard’s members and their families for too long.
We understand certain contingencies where the president might order limited operations abroad — 30-60 days — without a congressional declaration of war.
But open-ended operations over a decade, involving scores of National Guard units is misguided, if not an abuse of these troops. In some cases, soldiers in the Guard find themselves deploying more often than they did on active duty.
No one is advocating that our Guard units shirk their duty. However, they should only be deployed under official acts of war by Congress, as this bill declares.
It’s clear too that there is bipartisan support for this bill, some of it by House members who are veterans themselves.
Why not bring this proposal to the attention of a major committee or the House floor for debate?