Senate

McConnell backs off Iran vote

by Jordain Carney - 03/05/15 3:38 PM ET

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Thursday postponed a vote that had been expected next week on legislation allowing Congress to weigh in on any Iran nuclear deal.

“It is clear that Senate Democrats will filibuster their own bill — a bill they rushed to introduce before the White House cut a deal with Iran,” Don Stewart, McConnell’s spokesperson, said in an email. “So, instead, the Senate will turn next to the anti-human-trafficking legislation while Democrats decide whether or not they believe they and Congress as a whole should be able to review and vote on any deal the President cuts with the leaders of Iran.”

{mosads}The Kentucky Republican’s decision comes less than a day after he announced that the Senate would take a procedural vote next Tuesday on the legislation.

Under the proposal, Obama would have to submit any deal with Iran to Congress for review. The administration wouldn’t be able to roll back sanctions while lawmakers debated the deal.

“There is nothing partisan about the Senate acting to fulfill its constitutional role,” he said.

But Democrats threatened to pull their support for the legislation, saying they would block it from being taken up if the legislation didn’t go through the Foreign Relations Committee or was taken up before March 24.

“There is no immediate or urgent need to circumvent the Committee process and we are disappointed that you’ve pursued this partisan course of action,” Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.), Angus King (I-Maine), Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) wrote in a letter to McConnell.

Negotiators face a March 24 deadline to reach an agreement on a framework for the final deal.

Democrats quickly backed McConnell’s move. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said the decision was the “right thing.”

“As leaders we should seek to build and cultivate bipartisan support for Israel, not try to score cheap political points,” Reid said in a statement. “Democrats and Republicans joined together to ask Senator McConnell to reconsider his decision to rush this bill to the floor. …He did the right thing by heeding their advice.”

Meanwhile, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y) suggested that by trying to vote on the legislation next week the majority leader was “injecting politics into the U.S.-Israel relationship.”

“The relationship between the United States and Israel is at its strongest when both parties are working in tandem, and those of us that value that relationship are glad that Leader McConnell backed off,” he said.

This story was updated at 4:12 p.m.