House Republican leaders on Wednesday postponed work on a resolution to disapprove the Iran nuclear deal, after conservative members of Congress said they can’t support a process that will result in approving the agreement.
Republicans met Wednesday morning, which let some members argue that they should instead be passing legislation that says President Obama failed to live up to a law passed earlier this year, which said he must reveal all aspects of the deal to Congress. Many in the GOP have said Obama failed to do this, as a deal on inspections between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency has not been given to members of Congress or even Obama administration officials.
The House was expected to start work on the resolution disapproving of the Iran deal on Wednesday afternoon. That work involved debating and passing a rule setting out the terms of debate for the resolution — that rule set out 11 hours of debate, which would have resulted in a Friday vote.
But after objections were heard from many Republicans, the House recessed shortly after noon, and Republicans were preparing to meet at 4 p.m. to discuss what to do next.
If all Republicans are on board, the resolution disapproving of the agreement can pass easily. But while it can also pass the Senate, President Obama has said he would veto the resolution, and there is enough Democratic support to sustain Obama’s veto.
That means Congress can’t stop the Iran deal from taking effect, a fact that is giving conservative Republicans pause on their first week back from the August recess.
One way around the problem has been proposed by Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., who has proposed a resolution saying the administration has failed to provide all the required information about the Iran agreement, and as a result, the 60-day review period Congress has to examine the agreement should never have started. It says the congressional review period will only start when the IAEA agreement with Iran has been submitted to Congress.
Roskam says the administration has withheld that information “in clear violation of federal law.” Other Republicans, like Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., have argued that Congress has a right to all documents related to the deal.
Others have said they want Republican leaders to pull the disapproval resolution and introduce a resolution of approval, which they said would fail in the House.
The Republican-led Senate could then take up the resolution of approval and kill it with 51 votes by invoking a major rules change known as the “nuclear option,” conservatives said.
“They have the power to do it, they have just been unwilling to do it,” Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, said Wednesday of Senate Republican leaders, during a roundtable with House conservatives. “The Senate leadership needs to stand up and go nuclear on this.”
