E-mail: [email protected]
Opponents of the Iran nuclear deal in Congress admit they can no longer kill the accord. Their focus now is making sure there will be a vote on the agreement at all, and salvaging some political benefit from their well-funded bid to stop it.
Lawmakers, congressional staffers and lobbyists opposed to the deal reached in Vienna last month tell us they are now fighting to get more than 60 votes in the Senate for a resolution of disapproval to avoid a filibuster by Democrats supporting President Obama.
That is a far cry from the 67 votes in the Senate needed, along with two thirds of the House, to overturn an expected presidential veto of that resolution.
Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Wednesday it was “very unlikely” there would be 67 votes against the deal in the Senate, but there would be a “bipartisan majority” voting to disapprove of the deal. As of now, only two Senate Democrats and 14 House Democrats have come out against the pact.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid is threatening to filibuster the bill, and unless at least four more Democrats promise to vote against the deal, Reid may succeed. Critics of the deal are outraged at the idea that Congress’ only chance at oversight of the initiative might not even get a hearing on the Senate floor.
The White House is also reportedly pushing for the deal to be filibustered, so that Obama won’t have to veto a resolution disapproving the signature foreign-policy accomplishment of his presidency.
Deal opponents are trying to salvage political gains from their pending legislative defeat. Republicans are using the issue to batter their Democratic opponents for 2016 in ads, and the nuclear deal has already become a factor in Senate races in Ohio and Pennsylvania, both swing states in presidential elections.
Most of the Republican presidential candidates have made their opposition to the Iran deal a key plank in their foreign-policy platforms. Republicans in Congress are preparing several new Iran sanctions bills for the fall, none of which is likely to become law, in an attempt to keep the issue alive politically amid increasingly bad poll numbers for the deal.
From a political angle, not all those who oppose the nuclear deal believe that a filibuster of the Senate disapproval resolution is a bad thing. Some feel that the White House is miscalculating, and that shutting down the process for a congressional vote would only weaken the deal further.
The administration was always going to be able to implement the nuclear agreement even if Congress did initially vote against it, this argument goes, and if congressional oversight is stifled, that will only bolster the ability of the next president to scuttle the deal, or at least tighten its enforcement and punish Iran’s other illicit activities.
Nonetheless, many Republican now acknowledge in private that they were handed both a political and a policy defeat on the nuclear deal.
The pro-deal side has been willing to threaten the political futures of Democrats who oppose the president, while opponents of the deal have not. One pro-Israel lobbyist told us that the community of donors, fund-raisers and activists opposing the nuclear accord has yet to decide whether they will support primary opponents of the Democrats who vote with the president.
Contrast this to the White House, which suggested that Democrats may want to support an alternative leader in the Senate to Schumer, who was the consensus candidate to replace Harry Reid.
According to one whip count from a prominent Republican Senate office, there are now only 12 truly undecided votes among the Democrats.
Among those, opponents of the deal have focused on eight of them, according to one lobbyist: Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Maria Cantwell of Washington, Ben Cardin of Maryland, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Mark Warner of Virginia and Ron Wyden of Oregon.
Each undecided Democrat will have to weigh the risk of voter disapproval for supporting the deal against the intra-party pressure to back the president and the position of their presumptive presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton.
http://nypost.com/2015/08/29/fading-hopes-for-congress-to-stop-the-iran-deal/
Cathy
chulai1968
Truth Prevailing
Publius Huldah
radioroger2015
revaustinmiles
Steve