Sen. Tom Cotton and the White House are engaged in a testy back-and-forth over the issue of buying heavy water from Iran.
“The White House may think it’s a laughing matter to subsidize Iran’s nuclear program, but I don’t,” the Arkansas Republican said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Thursday morning. “Heavy water is not radioactive, not dangerous in normal quantities, but it is an essential part of any nuclear program like Iran’s.”
On Wednesday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest took aim at Cotton after Senate Democrats said they would continue debating a spending bill because of a Cotton amendment that would have blocked the purchase of heavy water from Iran.
“Sen. Cotton is certainly no expert when it comes to heavy water. I’m confident that he couldn’t differentiate heavy water from sparkling water. His focus is on undermining the effective implementation of this agreement that prevents Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” Earnest said. Those comments came after the Energy Department said it would buy 32 tons of heavy water from Iran that could be used for nuclear material.
Cotton said Thursday that the U.S. is not obligated to buy that heavy water.
“We certainly are not obligated to provide taxpayer dollars for Iran’s program for that heavy water,” Cotton explained. “I offered a simple amendment on the Department of Energy’s budget that said the U.S. taxpayer next year would not subsidize any more kinds of bills like this. Unfortunately, the Democrats blocked that amendment and that bill from going forward, even though I have a large majority in favor of my proposal.”
Co-host Joe Scarborough asked Cotton why he thought Democrats blocked it, to which he replied they don’t want to be seen as “opposing their president” or going on the record as having U.S. taxpayer dollars “subsidizing Iran’s nuclear majority program.”
“[O]n Capitol Hill, a poison pill is a term people use when they say this is a popular policy I oppose and I don’t have the votes to stop,” Cotton said in rejecting the notion that his amendment was a “poison pill” meant to kill the overall bill. “And I didn’t do this at the last minute. The administration at the last minute on Friday night dropped the news they were giving $9 million to Iran’s nuclear program. I filed this amendment on Monday, the very first day we were back in session after the administration’s last-minute news dump on Friday night.”
Cotton also added that he will put the amendment into a stand-alone bill, for which he has a majority in favor.
