Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) issued a stark warning to Democrats not to filibuster voting on a resolution to disapprove the Iran nuclear agreement.
“I expect that every senator who voted for [the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act] is now entitled to an up-or-down vote. Not a filibuster or artificial limits on passage, but an important vote on this resolution,” he said. “The Senate should not hide behind procedural obfuscation to shield the president or our individual views.”
McConnell’s comment come as Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden (Ore.), Gary Peters (Mich.) and Richard Blumenthal (Conn.) backed the Iran agreement on Tuesday, giving the deal 41 supporters in the Senate. It’s unclear, though, whether every senator who has backed the deal would also vote “no” on cloture — a procedural hurdle that will require opponents of the deal to get 60 votes to move forward on the resolution.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) over the weekend offered to allow the Senate to go directly to a vote on final passage, skipping procedural votes, but only if McConnell agreed to a 60-vote threshold for passage.
McConnell suggested Democrats were potentially filibustering the Iran resolution to protect Obama, adding that “while [Obama] will be out of office in a few months, the rest of the country and the world will have to deal with the predictable consequences of the president’s deal for far longer than the next year and a half.”
If Democrats don’t block the resolution, Obama will be forced to use a veto, something he’s only done four times during his time in office.
