Senate

Cardin: Always needed 60 votes for Iran bill

by Jordain Carney - 09/08/15 3:33 PM ET

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), one of four Senate Democrats opposing the Iran deal, suggested Tuesday that senators always knew they would need 60 votes to pass a resolution on the Iran agreement.

“It was clear in talking to the architects of this legislation that they always anticipated there would be a 60-vote threshold for the passage of this resolution in the United States Senate,” he said. “I thought Senator Reid’s suggestion was the right way to go. I hope we can find a way to avoid the procedural battles.”

{mosads}Cardin’s comments come as Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) are battling over how to proceed with the Iran resolution.

Reid tried to set up a vote for Thursday on attaching the resolution of disapproval of the Iran deal to a House-passed shell bill being used for the agreement. Under the Nevada Democrat’s offer, that would require a 60-vote threshold before moving to a vote on final passage of the resolution.

The Iran deal got 41 supporters in the Senate on Tuesday, with Democratic Sens. Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), Gary Peters (Mich.) and Ron Wyden (Ore.) announcing that they will back the agreement.

If all supporters also vote “no” on a cloture vote for moving forward with the resolution, President Obama will have enough support to block the resolution from initially passing the Senate. If not, Obama will be forced to use a veto, which he has only done four times during his time in office.

Republicans have slammed Democrats for potentially filibustering the deal, suggesting that it contradicts the 98-1 vote on the Iran Nuclear Review Act passed earlier this year that allows Congress to weigh in and vote on the deal.

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who spearheaded the Iran review bill, said Tuesday that “instead of this being about people expressing themselves relative to a policy that they felt was important to the country, all of the sudden it became about something else.”

“I don’t know how we can be in a place where we’ve said to our constituents we want to review and vote on this agreement, and then over some revisionist statement or thought, come up with a process that says we’re going to filibuster it,” he added, saying that he hopes “cooler heads will prevail.”

Tags Ben Cardin Bob Corker Harry Reid Mitch McConnell Richard Blumenthal Ron Wyden