Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I just want to again thank Senator Menendez for his tremendous leadership on this issue. He brought up a point I wish I had made in my opening comments. I have made it every time I have presented this bill elseways. But a lot of people do not realize that at present, because of the waivers that are part of the sanctions that we put in place--some of them through independent pieces of legislation, some of them through NDAAs--in each case the President was given a national security waiver. Again, as the Senator mentioned, it was never thought that waiver would be utilized to waive things ad infinitum. At present--a lot of people do not realize this--but the President today has the power, without this legislation, to go straight to the U.N. Security Council, without coming to Congress, and implement whatever deal he wants to implement with Iran. He has that ability. So when you think about what is happening here, and this is what is so powerful about this bipartisan effort, is that we together--we together--have said: Wait a minute. If we pass this legislation, we want to retake the ability ourselves to lift those sanctions or to have them lifted; we do not want the President going straight to the U.N. Security Council. I know Senator Kaine is on the floor. I cannot thank him enough for getting involved at the time he did.…”