Each passed with majorities big enough to override a veto. The Javits-Stennis-Eagleton bill passed the Senate by a vote of 68 to 16. The Zablocki bill passed the House 344 to 13. The lopsided vote testifies to the wide discontent that was in Congress. It was not often that Democrats as different as Stennis and Eagleton could agree with a Republican like Javits to merge their respective bills. In the House there were more than a dozen bills to limit the President's war-making powers. Their sponsors range from Ronald Dellums, the black militant Democrat from California, to John Rarick of Louisiana, who was described as a Birchite with a Southern accent. But the legislative battle was between revised versions of the Javits-Stennis-Eagleton bill in the Senate and the Zablocki bill in the House.
Both bills were extremely cautious in their draftsmanship, but in different ways. The House bill in its original form won such wide support because it sought to do so little. It merely required the President promptly to inform Congress whenever he committed US military forces to armed conflict abroad "without specific prior authorization by Congress." A salutary provision of the bill was that it applied not only to the commitment of troops to actual hostilities but also to their deployment abroad, though with a loophole, "except for humanitarian or other peaceful purposes.".
The Senate bill sought to disarm White House opposition by exempting the Indo-China war and it did not apply to "hostilities in which the Armed Forces of the United States are involved on the effective date of this Act." The bill contained enough loopholes to allow a wide range of future undeclared presidential wars. The President was allowed to use troops abroad without a declaration of war in order to repel an attack upon the United States and its possessions, or on its armed forces outside the United States, or "to forestall the direct and imminent threat of such an attack," or to evacuate citizens from an area in which they are endangered.