As President Bush prepared to confront Iraq, he sought an extra advantage: the power to wage war without further Congressional approval. His request to Congress for this authority was unprecedented: the constitution grants Congress the power to declare war, yet the president was asking for authorization to attack even though he had not publicly declared that war was necessary and had not demonstrated Iraq to be an imminent threat. Progressives opposed the resolution because they felt the war was unjustified and that the president was asking for too much power with too little accountability. Durbin (D-IL) proposed an amendment along these lines that would have changed the resolution to cover an "imminent" rather than "continuing" threat from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Progressives favored the amendment because it would make specific the conditions under which war was permitted and not provide such an unlimited grant of authority. This was the last attempt to amend the resolution on force, and it failed, 30-70.