A letter from the White House that said the U.N. Security Council, but not Congress, would have a chance to endorse any nuclear deal with Iran appears to have built support for legislation requiring President Obama to give lawmakers a say, the bill’s chief sponsor said Tuesday.
“I think in many ways the White House letter validated to some of the people who have been curious about how they planned to handle this that they do not want any congressional involvement,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., said.
He said the committee would mark up the legislation either Wednesday or Thursday. The bipartisan bill, co-sponsored by the panel’s ranking Democrat, Bob Menendez of New Jersey, would require Obama to submit any nuclear deal to Congress for approval and tie relief from U.S. sanctions for Iran to that process.
The legislation is the product of an ongoing dispute with the White House over the proper role of Congress in any deal. Obama has said he would not submit the deal to Congress for approval, but lawmakers insist they must have a voice, not the least because U.S. sanctions against Iran have been enacted into law, some over Obama’s veto.
Obama’s snub of Congress has brought many Democrats on board with Corker and Menendez’s efforts. Including Menendez, the bill has 15 co-sponsors, six of them Democrats.
Obama has threatened to veto the bill, and Sunday’s letter from Chief of Staff Dennis McDonough said the Corker-Menendez bill would hurt the ongoing talks and “potentially prevent any deal from succeeding.” McDonough’s letter was the White House’s response to one Thursday from Corker in which he said it would be “a direct affront to the American people” to seek U.N. approval of a nuclear deal and not submit the deal to Congress as well.
Corker told reporters he expects the Foreign Relations Committee will approve the legislation next week.
“If people stay in the positions they’ve been, we will,” he said. “I haven’t heard anything to think that’s not the case.”
He would not, however, predict whether support for the legislation was strong enough to overcome a presidential veto.
“We’ve got a lot of support as you know,” he said. “People understand that it’s an honest attempt to cause Congress to appropriately weigh in. It was crafted in a bipartisan way with a lot of consultation on both sides of the aisle, and hopefully it’s something that will stand the test of time.”
