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Democrats have enough Senate votes to stifle Iran opposition


Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) talks to the media on Capitol Hill in Washington in a Nov. 18, 2014, file photo. Manchin said Tuesday that he will oppose the Iran nuclear deal, breaking with his party.
(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

By Mike DeBonis
September 8, 2015 at 12:59 PM

Three Democratic senators announced Tuesday they will vote in support of the nuclear deal with Iran, appearing to pave the way for a filibuster of Republican-led attempts to disapprove of the controversial agreement.

Pro-deal statements from Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) mean 41 senators are now publicly backing the deal, enough to keep a disapproval resolution from emerging from the Senate and making its way to President Obama's desk and forcing a veto.

A fourth Democrat making an announcement Tuesday morning, Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), said he would vote to disapprove of the deal.

The decisions come on the day lawmakers are reassembling after a month-long break, with the Iran deal at the top of a high-stakes list of September business. Six Democrats remained undecided at the close of the holiday weekend. With 38 senators already publicly in favor of the deal -- enough to sustain a presidential veto -- none of those senators was expected to derail it. But the question of whether Democrats would cobble together enough support to prevent a disapproval resolution from reaching Obama's desk has been closely watched on Capitol Hill.

At the White House, press secretary Josh Earnest said the administration felt "gratified" by the growing support for the Iran nuclear deal, and he suggested that the White House expects Democratic supporters to filibuster the vote to disapprove the accord.

Supporters "should take the necessary steps in Congress to prevent Congress from undermining the agreement," Earnest said. He noted that Republicans often filibustered legislation when the GOP was in the minority in the Senate.

Blumenthal, Peters and Wyden had long been considered possible opponents of the deal, given the opposition of the Israeli government and significant elements of the American Jewish community. Blumenthal and Wyden are Jewish, and Peters has close ties to Michigan's Jewish leadership; all have made comments critical of the deal since its announcement in July.

But all three said in separate statements Tuesday that the deal negotiated by President Obama in conjunction with international allies is, while imperfect, the best path forward.

“While this is not the agreement I would have accepted at the negotiating table, it is better than no deal at all," Blumenthal said.

"This agreement with the duplicitous and untrustworthy Iranian regime falls short of what I had envisioned, however I have decided the alternatives are even more dangerous," Wyden wrote [ https://medium.com/@RonWyden/my-statement-on-the-joint-comprehensive-plan-of-action-d1f2630ff4f6 ].

Said Peters, "Despite my serious concerns with this agreement, I have unfortunately become convinced that we are faced with no viable alternative."

Manchin is the fourth Senate Democrat to oppose the deal, following Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), Robert Menendez (N.J.) and Ben Cardin (Md.). One senator, Maria Cantwell (Wash.), has not yet announced her position.

Manchin said in a statement that he "could not ignore the fact that Iran, the country that will benefit most from sanctions being lifted, refuses to change its 36-year history of sponsoring terrorism. ... I cannot gamble our security, and that of our allies, on the hope that Iran will conduct themselves differently than it has for the last 36 years."

He added that if Iran is caught violating the nuclear agreement, "I have grave doubts that we will have unified, committed partners willing to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon."

Congress faces a tight timeline for taking action on the Iran deal. Under review legislation passed earlier this year, lawmakers have until Sept. 17 to weigh in for or against the agreement. The Senate is expected to take the first votes, which could come as soon as Thursday.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said last month that he expects to have a debate [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/08/06/mitch-mcconnell-to-obama-tone-down-the-rhetoric-on-iran/ ] beforehand "with the dignity and respect that it deserves" -- including the rare spectacle of having all 100 senators at the desks on the Senate floor.

Ahead of that debate, both sides have been preparing for the possibility that a disapproval resolution might not emerge from the Senate. Republicans have decried the potential use of the filibuster, while Democrats have pointed out numerous occasions where Republicans filibustered important legislation.

Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) defended the deal in a Tuesday morning address at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington and laid out some of the procedural hurdles to be dealt with in the coming days. Democrats have already passed up one opportunity to bottle up the Iran opposition by agreeing to begin debate on the deal. But it will take 60 votes to close debate and quickly move to a final vote.

“Democrats have already agreed to forgo our opportunity to filibuster, and I’ve offered Leader McConnell the chance to go straight to a vote on passage of the resolution," he said. "But of course, as he has noted many times in the past, everything of importance in the Senate requires 60 votes. So passage will require 60 votes."

“There is no precedent in recent history for an issue of this magnitude getting consideration in the Senate without having to secure 60 votes," Reid added. "This is not about how any one leader manages the floor – this is a precedent stretching back decades."

Manchin's decision to oppose the deal stands as one of the few clear-cut victories for the anti-deal forces that had hoped to swing lawmakers' opinion during the August summer break, spending millions on TV and radio ads. Before leaving Washington, Manchin had indicated he was "leaning very strongly" in support of the agreement, as he put it in a July 26 appearance on CBS's "Face the Nation."

But public opinion in West Virginia, whose politics have trended increasingly conservative over the past two decades, was strongly against the deal, and Manchin undertook an unusually public deliberative process. On his Web site, he listed dozens of meetings, hearings and briefings he had participated in with key policymakers inside and outside the federal government. And he was virtually the only decided Democrat to take his decision directly to his constituents by holding town hall meetings in his home state.

[West Virginia is getting an up-close look at one undecided Democrat’s Iran agony]

About 500 attended a Thursday town hall in Charleston, and the opinions of those attendees ran strongly against the agreement. Many wore shirts declaring, "We Need a Better Deal." During the event, Manchin declared himself undecided, gave numerous facts and arguments both for and against the deal, and said whatever decision he made would be a close call.

"If anyone tells you they are 100 percent for this deal or 100 percent against this deal, they haven't read it," he said. "They haven't studied it. The best I could ever could be is 60 percent for, 60 percent against, and it'll probably come down, it'll be 51 percent for or against when I make the final decision."

Karoun Demirjian and David Nakamura contributed to this report.

© 2015 The Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/09/08/sen-joe-manchin-opposes-iran-deal-making-obama-veto-more-likely/ [with comments]

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