Democrats killed a controversial amendment to the Senate’s energy and water appropriations bill Wednesday morning, allowing the full bill to head toward a final vote.
A vote to close debate on a measure proposed by Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., to keep the Department of Energy from buying heavy water from Iran in the future failed to get 60 votes in the Senate Wednesday. Per his agreement with Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., Cotton will withdraw his amendment from the appropriations bill.
Alexander said that should allow the Senate to pass the $37.5 billion funding bill later on Wednesday. A vote to close debate on the appropriations bill is scheduled for noon, and a vote on passage could come after lunch.
“We have a lot waiting to be done,” Alexander said.
Cotton’s amendment on Iran was seen by many Democrats as a “poison pill” amendment that would effectively kill the bill. President Obama threatened to veto the appropriations bill if it included any “ideological riders,” which Alexander took to mean Cotton’s amendment.
However, the junior senator from Arkansas said he felt the amendment deserved to be on the energy and water appropriations bill because the Department of Energy is among the agencies funded by the measure.
Cotton criticized Democrats for sending taxpayer dollars to Iran.
“Senate Democrats once again put political gamesmanship over the safety and security of the American people by voting to allow American taxpayer dollars to be used to prop up the terror-sponsoring ayatollahs in Iran,” Cotton said after the vote. “This vote is particularly troubling given recent admissions by Obama administration officials that they actively sought to mislead the public on the Iran deal.”
Cotton said earlier this month that he has drafted a standalone bill on banning heavy water purchases from Iran, but he has not introduced such a measure.
In remarks before the vote, Alexander said a standalone measure on banning purchases of heavy water from Iran is the best way to consider the idea.
He said he didn’t want Cotton’s amendment to pass because the Senate’s Foreign Relations, Intelligence and Armed Services committees should consider it. The consequences of the amendment needed to be thought out, especially since there’s a question of who would be buying heavy water, a non-radioactive material used in making nuclear weapons and energy, from Iran if it wasn’t the United States.
For instance, it could go to countries such as North Korea that would use it to make nuclear weapons, he said.
“I don’t want us to approve an amendment that creates the possibility of that,” he said.
California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said removing the Cotton amendment from the appropriations bill hopefully will keep other controversial amendments from being added to funding measures.
“I hope it sends a strong signal for the rest of the appropriation process that if we want to show that we can run this place and get business done, poison pills have no place on appropriations bills,” she said.
