Under fire, McConnell delays Iran bill vote

WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is putting off a vote on an Iran bill

Mere hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used his Tuesday address to a joint session of Congress to warn American lawmakers about the emerging deal between five global powers and Tehran, the Kentucky Republican announced his intention to hold a vote next week on a bill requiring congressional approval of any accord.

Democrats reacted with shock, believing they had a deal with GOP leaders to wait until March 24. That’s when the framework of an Iran deal must be in place. Even some Republicans were caught off guard, saying they understood Democrats’ pleas to let the talks play out.

When a faction of hawkish Democrats told the majority leader they would not support the legislation until the late-March deadline has come and gone, he altered course.

“It is clear that Senate Democrats will filibuster their own bill — a bill they rushed to introduce before the White House cut a deal with Iran,” Don Stewart, McConnell’s spokesman, wrote in an e-mail.

“So, instead, the Senate will turn next to the anti-human-trafficking legislation while Democrats decide whether or not they believe they and Congress as a whole should be able to review and vote on any deal the president cuts with the leaders of Iran,” Stewart wrote. “The Senate will take up the trafficking bill on Tuesday morning.”

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., a co-sponsor of the bill McConnell had planned to bring to the floor, told reporters Wednesday that he talked to Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., about McConnell’s plan. His conclusion after that conversation was Tuesday’s cloture floor action will be nothing but “a show vote.”

“The whole idea was to build this in a bipartisan way,” Kaine told reporters just before the Senate adjourned early ahead of Thursday’s snowstorm. “You’re going to stop that in its tracks if you yank it up prematurely.

“And, in addition to it being met on the partisanship front, this is about the Iranian nuclear deal. If a deal gets on the table, we have to show that we can consider it in a mature and deliberate way, rather than in a rushed and partisan way,” he said. “If you treat this precursor bill in a partisan way, it’s not going to send a very good message about the degree of seriousness about which we’ll consider the real issue.”

Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Wednesday he was concerned the legislation was being “hijacked for a political purpose.”

Democrats wanted to put the bill through what both parties consider “regular order,” meaning committee hearings, then a mark-up with amendments, and a full panel vote on whether to send it to the floor.

“We can get this whole process done well before June and be ready for the process to take place,” Menendez said. “So I don’t understand why this rush to the floor, violating regular order, which the majority leader himself has called for.”

On Wednesday, Corker described McConnell’s change of plans as mostly about the upper chamber’s procedural rules.

Some observers wondered whether the procedural explanation was merely a way for McConnell, at the time, to save face after members of both parties questioned his now-scuttled plan.

Menendez, Kaine and eight other hawkish-on-Tehran Senate Democrats wrote a letter to McConnell on Wednesday saying they would vote for an Iran bill on the floor only after March 24.

That letter appears to have altered the majority leader’s calculus. That’s because Republicans would need a handful of Democrats to reach the 60-vote threshold, which turned unlikely with the hawkish wing of that party objecting to McConnell’s plan to bring it up two weeks before Western and Iranian negotiators face a deadline.

Yet, even on Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning, McConnell’s camp insisted his endgame was full Senate passage next week.

“It’s basically initiating the procedure to get the bill up before the Senate. It’s the same procedure that was used for the Keystone XL Pipeline,” said Senate GOP Whip John Cornyn, McConnell’s right-hand man, after the chamber’s final pre-snow storm vote Wednesday.

“In other words, whenever the committee produces a product, then it can be substituted for the shell bill,” the Texan said.

When pressed to confirm that the goal was not to pass an actual bill next week, Cornyn replied: “No, it is. We’re going to have a real, live vote on Tuesday on whether to proceed to the bill.”

And Stewart, McConnell’s spokesman, echoed that Thursday morning in an e-mail.

“The goal is to pass the bill and give Congress the ability to review/vote on any agreement (a goal he shares with Sen. Menendez),” Stewart wrote. “The odd thing is that now Democrats are willing to filibuster their own bill. That makes no sense.

“Remember, they wanted to wait on sanctions legislation, and rushed to offer this bipartisan bill instead,” Stewart said. “The new ‘logic’ is that they need to wait until there’s an agreement to decide whether or not they want to have a role.”

McConnell, speaking on the floor late Wednesday, also dismissed Democrats’ assertion that he was merely playing partisan games.

“There is nothing partisan about the Senate acting to serve its constitutional role in oversight, and in pursuing policies that uphold the national security interest,” he said. “It was the Obama administration that decided to negotiate an agreement with Iran that would not be submitted to the Senate as a treaty. The White House went out of its way to bypass the elected representatives of the people in this negotiation with Iran.

“It is my sincere hope that the sponsors of this bill … will not filibuster and prevent the full Senate from also acting on their important legislation,” McConnell said. “The senators who introduced this bill should certainly vote to debate this act.”