Tim Kaine: “I rise to speak about President Trump's veto of S.J. Res. 68, a veto that he communicated to the Senate by a statement…”

“I rise to speak about President Trump's veto of S.J. Res. 68, a veto that he communicated to the Senate by a statement yesterday afternoon. We debated this at length in February. So there is no need to spend too much time on the substance. I was proud of the resolution, cosponsoring it in a bipartisan way, to assert the importance of the Senate. I very much appreciated hearing my colleague from Oklahoma talk about the importance of the Senate. The debate that we had in February about S.J. Res. 68 was about the importance of Congress in one of the most important responsibilities we have, whether or not the Nation would go to war. We specified in that resolution that except to defend the Nation against attack or imminent attack, the United States would not be engaged in war with the government of Iran absent a congressional vote. It passed this body by a healthy bipartisan margin and also passed the House by a bipartisan margin. The President has vetoed S.J. Res. 68, and the next vote at 1:30 will be on whether to override the veto. I know what the votes will be because we have already voted on this once. I want to just focus for a minute on the President's veto statement, which I think is instructive. When he vetoed S.J. Res. 68, this was his primary reason--the first thing he said: This was a very insulting resolution introduced by Democrats as part of a strategy to win an election on November 3 by dividing the Republican Party.…”