Political Quotes

“Mr. President, if I could follow up, I have been in extensive conversations with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who I know has tremendous respect on this side of the aisle. She sent out a release today in response to this amendment that is coming before us today that the proposed Iranian nuclear agreement is classically an executive agreement and does not need to be a treaty with the advice and consent of the Senate--this is our former Secretary of State under George W. Bush--but Congress should be able to opine, given the congressionally mandated sanctions would have to be lifted. I think everybody on our side of the aisle understands that with four tranches of sanctions that Congress put in place--we brought them to the table with Senator Menendez leading that effort, and in each of those cases, which is traditionally done, we gave a national security waiver. No one ever thought the President would use the national security waiver to kick the can down the road for years on the congressionally mandated sanctions without our approval. But everybody in this body who has been here in recent times participated in giving the President--if you voted for these sanctions and in some cases they were unanimous--the unilateral ability to waive the sanctions. If we pass this underlying bill, on which we now have 67 cosponsors, we are taking back that authority. But to try to deem this as a treaty is a losing effort.…”