Liberals have spent much of the last few years lamenting the death of bipartisanship and placing all of the blame for this problem on House Republicans. But with Congress preparing to take up the issue of President Obama’s Iran nuclear deal when it returns from its spring recess next week, it is Senate Democrats who are giving us an example of partisan politics at its absolute worst. As Politico reports, the overwhelming bipartisan majority that has existed on behalf of both Iran sanctions and the right of Congress to perform its constitutional duty to advise and consent on treaties is being splintered by Democrats who are determined to do the president’s bidding. Some Democrats who are sponsors of the Corker-Menendez bill mandating a congressional vote on the Iran deal want to water it down with amendments that will turn the effort to hold the administration accountable into a farce.
Heading into the expected battle over the bill next week, supporters of Corker-Menendez believe they have 66 votes in their pockets with all 54 Republicans and 12 Democrats on record as supporting the legislation. That’s just one vote short of a veto-proof majority that would ensure that Congress would be able to vote on the Iran deal rather than let the president adopt it unilaterally. Unlike the Kirk-Menendez bill proposing increased sanctions on Iran in the event of the failure of the diplomatic process, which has lost momentum as a series of American concessions led to an agreement, Corker-Menendez has always had near across-the-board backing. Not many congressional Democrats were inclined to speak up against a measure that merely asserts the legislative branch’s right to exercise its constitutional responsibilities on foreign treaties. Nor are many of the 12 Democratic co-sponsors backing down on that point. But they also appear to be wiling to gut the bill in order to stay on good terms with the White House.
As I noted earlier this week, Democratic Senate leader-in-waiting Chuck Schumer is walking a fine line between his obligation to do the president’s dirty work and his reputation as a supporter of Israel. He appears to have resolved that conflict for the moment by choosing to stick to his principles rather than the president and reaffirmed his support for Corker-Menendez. But given the delicate maneuvering going on in the Democratic caucus right now, it’s reasonable to think that he might be encouraging others to refuse to back the measure or, even worse, those among his co-sponsors who want to water it down to the point where it would be an exercise in futility.
The White House has indicated that it could live with a purely symbolic vote on the deal. Of course it would. But accepting only a non-binding vote on the most significant foreign agreement struck by the United States in more than a generation is a bit much even for many Democrats. Nor is Republican Bob Corker, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair who is clearly less than enthusiastic about confronting the president, prepared to see his handiwork reduced to a joke. So instead some Democrats are preparing amendments that would do the same thing.
Delaware Senator Chris Coons has filed an amendment that would strip the bill of its provision requiring the administration to certify that Iran isn’t directly involved in terror attacks against the United States. Connecticut’s Chris Murphy has also filed an amendment to allow the president to lift existing sanctions on Iran without an enabling vote by Congress in order to get Iran to agree to a final written version of the deal.
These two Democrats are claiming that they are still supporting the bill and the principle of legislative review of the deal, but the substance of their proposals would help strip it of any meaning. Do Americans really want their government to stop caring if the world’s leading state sponsor of terror is plotting against Americans? Do they want to give the president the power to act on his own to give an economic bonanza to a tyrannical and aggressive Islamist regime? These measures not only give Obama dictatorial powers on Iran but also would enable the administration to downgrade efforts to hold the entire process accountable. They may be helped immeasurably in this scheme by the replacement of embattled Senator Bob Menendez—a fierce opponent of Obama’s push for détente with Iran—by Ben Cardin—a dependable administration loyalist—as the ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee.
They’re being aided in this effort by the fact that the new GOP majority in the Senate is determined to play fair in a way that their Democratic counterparts did not during their time in control of the upper body. Corker has vowed to have an open amendment process in committee and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has similarly promised to follow his Democratic predecessor Harry Reid’s practice of preventing the minority from proposing amendments on the floor once the bill gets out of committee. That will mean that Corker-Menendez could be crippled by amendments from both open opponents and those, like Coons and Murphy, who purport to be its supporters.
The bottom line here is that with each passing day, the odds of a clean bill emerging with the 67 votes needed to ensure that it will become law may be decreasing. If that is the case the fault lies entirely with senators who are talking out of both sides of their mouths when it comes to the Iran nuclear threat and the Constitution. The only hope of providing some accountability to a diplomatic process that has achieved success only by a procession of humiliating retreats by the president is the passage of a bill that will force a real debate and vote on the deal. Though liberals have been telling us that the country is sick of crooked congressional maneuvers, it is the Senate Democrats who giving us a lesson in how low they can sink in order to please the head of their party.
