The House voted Tuesday to sanction North Korea over nuclear weapons testing, in a bipartisan vote that signaled discontent among Republicans and Democrats with President Obama’s foreign policy approach hours before his final State of the Union Address.
The bill to expand sanctions against North Korea easily passed, just a week after that country detonated an underground nuclear weapon it claimed was a hydrogen bomb. The measure passed 418-2; all but two Republicans voted for it, and they were joined by every voting Democrat.
However, the parties are divided on a second bill the House plans to vote on Wednesday that would essentially reinstall sanctions that are to be lifted against Iran as part of the recently approved nuclear arms agreement.
Republicans said the pair of bills show the House responding to “President Obama’s foreign policy weakness.” They told reporters Tuesday they want Obama to address the rising threat of the Islamic State, North Korea and Iran in his last State of the Union speech at 9 p.m.
“From Paris to San Bernardino to Philadelphia to Istanbul this morning, we are living in an unsafe world, and it has to be addressed,” said Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. “Now the House will not sit back and wait for the president to finally come up with a plan. If you watch on the floor today, before the president enters to give his State of the Union, we’ll vote on new sanctions on North Korea. Tomorrow, before we depart for our retreat, we’ll vote on sanctions for Iran.”
Democrats and Republicans praised the North Korea sanctions bill, which they said would block the regime’s access to hard currency, preventing it from paying its military generals and furthering its nuclear weapons program.
“The legislation that we are considering here is the most comprehensive North Korea sanctions legislation to come before this body,” said House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif. “Importantly, what this bill does is use targeted financial and economic pressure to isolate Kim Jong-un and his top officials from the assets that they maintain in foreign banks and from the hard currency that sustains their rule.”
The ranking Democrat, Eliot Engel, of New York, who has traveled to Pyongyang twice, said the bill will broaden sanctions against North Korea and strengthen enforcement.
Engel did not criticize Obama, but called on the United States to “make sure this issue is at the top of the agenda in our engagement with China.” He also said North Korea’s nuclear test “demands a response.”
Engel and other Democratic leaders do not support the Iran sanctions bill, despite declaring they don’t trust Iran and acknowledging it is violating United Nations sanctions with its ballistic missile testing.
House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said he opposes the GOP’s Iran sanctions bill because it would be “essentially a repeal” of the nuclear agreement reached last year with Iran in which the United States agrees to lift economic sanctions in exchange for Iran’s reduction in its nuclear program.
