Wendy Sherman: “I voted for every sanctions bill on Iran that has come to this floor--I helped draft many of them--and I am ready to…”

“I voted for every sanctions bill on Iran that has come to this floor--I helped draft many of them--and I am ready to help draft, work on, and vote for sanctions bills on Iran because Iran continues its behavior in the area of missiles, and terrorism, and keeps seizing American hostages. I am ready to work on and support legislation to impose sanctions on Iran even if it is opposed by the administration. After all, almost every sanctions bill passed by this Congress was opposed either by the George W. Bush administration or this administration. We need a good process to draft good legislation that will do what President Obama told us we would do, and that is use sanctions to deal with Iran's nonnuclear wrongdoing. But we need a good process that will get us good legislation. Unfortunately, this is a bill that is the product of a bad process, a flawed process, and the bill itself is flawed. Let's look at the process. Almost 100 cosponsors, but all of them from one party. No Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee was invited to help draft the legislation or even invited to cosponsor it. Now this bill comes to the floor under a closed rule, a rule that prevents us from offering amendments that will deal with the flaws in the bill. There are at least two such flaws. The first is that the bill deprives the President of the authority to delist 489 entities.…”