The White House has urged lawmakers to vote exclusively on the deal’s ability to prevent Iran from building a bomb, not on its other destabilizing activities or anti-American sentiments. And as someone who does firmly believe that Iran must not get a nuclear weapon and who has wrestled with this issue since the beginning of my presidency, I can tell you that alternatives to military actions will have been exhausted once we reject a hard-won diplomatic solution that the world nearly unanimously supports.
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House Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Member Eliot Engel, Schumer’s New York colleague, also officially announced he was against the deal, despite a one-on-one meeting with Obama last week.
Schumer’s decision also puts him at odds with the Democrats’ likely presidential nominee, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has cautiously embraced the deal. Republicans, who control the House and Senate, are uniformly opposed to the deal.
There are “a couple of – maybe three – key senators on the Democratic side that, depending on which way they go, will sway a number of others”, said Tennessee Republican Bob Corker, current chairman of the Senate Foreign Committee, though he declined to name them.
A White House official suggested Thursday that Schumer’s announcement of opposition came only after enough Democratic support was assured to keep the plan intact.
During the recess, outside groups opposed to the deal will be pouring tens of millions of dollars into campaign-style efforts to sway wavering Democrats and shape public opinion to ramp up pressure around the fall debate in Congress. They will be broadcasting ads, sending out mailings and visiting members’ home-state offices.
But a series of videos showing Planned Parenthood officials discussing the sale of fetal tissue has triggered a new controversy over federal funding for the non-profit group. They now say the war was a mistake. And Schumer’s opposition now coming weeks before the vote could provide cover for any who anxious about breaking with their party.
But in recent days a steady stream of public endorsements made supporters more confident they would have a firewall in place to uphold the deal.
“I’ve got work to do”, Democratic Sen.
McConnell pointedly objected to those remarks, saying, “The president ought to treat this like a serious national security debate rather than a political campaign and tone down the rhetoric and talk about the facts”. But the fact is, partly due to American military and intelligence assistance, which my administration has provided at unprecedented levels, Israel can defend itself against any conventional danger, whether from Iran directly or from its proxies. Mark Warner of Virginia, another Democrat wrestling with how to vote, told CNN.
AU students and staff from all schools in the University also attended, with each school allocated tickets to engage the AU community, according to James Goldgeier, Dean of the School of worldwide Service. “I’m about a third of the way through the process”.
-Pope Francis’ first-ever papal address to Congress on September 24 has sparked the most requests for invitations he’s aware of for any speech to Congress. “On the front end, ask tough questions, subject our own assumptions to evidence and analysis, resist the conventional wisdom and the drumbeat of war, worry less about being labeled weak, worry more about getting it right”.
Though much of his attack was directed at Republicans – he accused them of making “common cause” with hardliners in Tehran chanting “Death to America” – it’s unclear whether the President’s sharpened message will backfire with those Democrats that he most needs to convince. As of Wednesday afternoon, 16 House Democrats and 11 senators had publicly declared their support for the deal. “What I’ve heard instead are the same types of arguments that we heard in the run-up to the Iraq war”.
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“I don’t oppose this deal because I want war”, said Netanyahu.
