WASHINGTON — A move to write new war powers to authorize the Obama administration’s 9-month-old battle against Islamic State militants has stalled in Congress. It might be dead.

President Barack Obama doesn’t seem to mind. And while lawmakers say they don’t want to give up their check on a commander-in-chief’s authority to use military might, they have little interest in having what would be the first war vote in Congress in 13 years.

Sen. Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was recently asked whether Congress was still going to craft a new AUMF.

“What does that stand for?” Corker joked, knowing that it stands for Authorization for the Use of Military Force. But his five words said a lot.

After Obama ordered airstrikes in August over Iraq and in September over Syria against IS militants, lawmakers complained he was justifying the action with dusty war powers written to authorize conflicts after 9-11. Today, there is hardly a word about it on Capitol Hill.

“I’m not optimistic. I wish I were,” Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told The Associated Press. “The snag is there is no real political will or interest in doing it.”

He said Congress has a lot to lose if it doesn’t.

“As an institution, we’re the ones who are going to suffer because future presidents are going to look back at this and say, ‘We don’t need Congress to make war.’ It’s a terrible precedent,” Schiff said.

He believes if a new military force authorization is not passed, the current Congress will have done more to weaken its own power as a check on the executive branch than any other Congress in memory.

In the U.S. battle against the Islamic State group, Obama has been relying on congressional authorizations given to President George W. Bush for the war on al-Qaida and the Iraq invasion.