Dick Lugar: “during this debate on the pending amendment, three arguments have been made. I want to respond to them briefly. One came…”

“during this debate on the pending amendment, three arguments have been made. I want to respond to them briefly. One came about through Senators suggesting that the President of the United States, who just today proposed sanctions on certain firms in Russia and pertaining to Iranian missile transfers, would not have had the ability to impose those sanctions if the amendment that we are debating had been the law of the land. Later, the distinguished Senator from Arizona, after a careful reading of the legislation, noted that on page 30 of the amendment-- this is the language: ``The President may waive any of the requirements of subsections (a), (b), (c), (d), (e)''--and so forth--in the event that the President determines there exists a national emergency that requires the exercise of the waiver. I made that point in an earlier presentation, but I simply wanted to reiterate there are emergency situations regarding the national security of this country. The President must have the ability to act. Our legislation expressly gives him that waiver ability.”