Political Quotes

“I noticed the majority leader has given us all notice that, after consultation with the Democratic leader, he intends to bring up the Iran Sanctions Act, H.R. 6297. I point out that this legislation passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 419 to 1. It is legislation that would extend the Iran Sanctions Act that was passed by this Congress that is set to expire at the end of this year. Let me repeat that. The Iran Sanctions Act, which was enacted originally in 1996--if no action is taken before the end of December, that sanction authorization legislation would expire. This is our last opportunity to extend the Iran Sanctions Act before it is scheduled to expire at the end of December. It was passed in 1996 by a unanimous vote of this body. Its goal was to deny Iran the ability to be able to have financial support for its nuclear proliferation. Congress had passed several bills that provided sanction opportunities by the administration to impose sanctions in order to get Iran to change its behavior, its illegal activities in pursuing a nuclear weapon, which was against U.S. security interests, destabilizing for the entire region, threatened Israel, threatened the neighboring states. It was, I think, the unanimous view of our body that we had to take whatever steps were possible to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear weapon power.…”