Supporters of bipartisan legislation that would require President Obama to submit any nuclear deal with Iran to Congress for review believe they have enough votes to overcome conservative efforts to rewrite the bill and pass it in the Senate.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell appears likely to move next week to end debate on the bill and stop the flood of Republican amendments that could upset the fragile compromise. Supporters believe they have at least the 60 votes needed to support cloture, as it is called, and move to a vote.
“A substantial, bipartisan majority is now prepared to vote on this bill to restrict the president’s authority to waive congressional sanctions and allow Congress a vote on a deal with Iran. It’s likely at this point that cloture will be filed as early as next week,” a Senate aide told the Washington Examiner.
Senate Democrats and the two independent senators have united behind the bipartisan compromise, which would give Congress 30 days to review a deal and decide whether to vote on a resolution of disapproval. If one is adopted, the bill allows another 22-day period during which President Obama can veto the resolution and Congress could try to override his veto.
During that period, Obama may not waive any sanctions written into U.S. law. But if the disapproval resolution is not adopted over his expected veto, that restriction is lifted, clearing the way for an agreement to be implemented.
But McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, has been dogged by divisions between more conservative members of his caucus and allies of Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker of Tennessee, who co-wrote the bill with Democrat Bob Menendez of New Jersey and has led negotiations on the compromise version.
Conservative Republicans, pushed by activists on the Right, say the legislation concedes too much to a president they already suspect of abusing his authority. They have introduced dozens of amendments seeking tougher oversight of a potential deal, but most of those would turn Democrats against the final product, causing it to fail to meet the 60-vote threshold required to overcome a filibuster.
In effect, the legislation turns the treaty ratification process under the Constitution upside-down. Instead of 67 Senate votes to ratify a treaty, the bill would require 67 votes to block Obama from carrying out any agreement.
Obama has refused to submit any deal for Senate ratification as a treaty — a sore point with many Republicans, who say the Constitution requires it. But they would need to muster a veto-proof majority to force him to do so.
In an effort to protect the compromise, Corker and 11 other Republicans joined Democrats in a 39-57 vote Tuesday rejecting a bid to require Obama to submit any deal as a treaty.
But debate on the bill stalled Thursday after Republican Tom Cotton of Arkansas introduced amendments that would require a congressional vote before any lifting of sanctions against Iran and require Obama to certify that Iran has recognized Israel’s right to exist as a condition of congressional approval of any deal.
Cotton introduced the amendments in such a way as to force senators to vote on them first before moving on to consider the compromise legislation itself, a move supporters were trying to avoid.
“Right as a bipartisan agreement was being finalized to consider several more amendments to the Iran bill, an unorthodox move — seen by many as a bad-faith effort — was made to circumvent the orderly process for consideration of amendments,” the aide told the Washington Examiner.
Presidential politics also has intruded into the debate. Marco Rubio of Florida, one of several announced GOP candidates in 2016, helped Cotton orchestrate Thursday’s parliamentary move that stalled debate on the bill.
Rubio, the original sponsor of the Israel provision, had previously demanded in a floor speech Wednesday that senators vote on it — which Democrats were reluctant to do, even though a key pro-Israel lobby group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, backs their position that the amendment would destroy the compromise by setting an impossible standard for Obama to meet.
“We need to vote,” Cotton said Thursday. “If you don’t want to vote you shouldn’t have come to the Senate. If you’re in the Senate and you don’t want to vote, you should leave.”
