Political Quotes

“I will address the comments made by my colleagues. I appreciate their thoughtful comments. First, this is not just a sanctions amendment. This is a sanctions amendment which imposes additional sanctions, but it also has a large prodemocracy component to support prodemocracy efforts and public diplomacy within Iran. Second, with respect to the sanctions, I agree with some of the criticisms leveled by Senator Levin that it adds things which were not in the previous versions. One thing it adds is a nuclear components provision, which says that if you are going to be a company that is doing business with Iran in the development of their nuclear weapons capability, you cannot do business with us in America. If that is objectionable to folks, I find it somewhat remarkable that we would want companies doing business in Iran doing business here. But that is a new sanction; he is correct. What he is not correct about is that we make it more difficult to waive these sanctions. In fact, we have made it easier to waive sanctions. We have given the President more time to waive sanctions. In fact, the big difference between the House bill and ours is we are much more liberal with respect to the waiver authority of the President. In that respect, the House bill passed--I have the exact vote--by a vote of 397 to 21. That is the bill which passed in the House of Representatives just 2 months ago.…”