Iran Nuclear Deal

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. McCLINTOCK. Mr. Speaker, I rise to express my deep disappointment in the decision by the House leadership to back off from a direct vote on a resolution of disapproval of the Iran nuclear accord as provided under the Corker Act.

Clearly, the President has not complied with the requirements of Corker to provide Congress with the full text of its agreement with Iran, most specifically, the side deals referenced in the agreement between Iran and the IAEA.

H. Res. 411, which declares the administration out of compliance with the Corker Act, is well-founded, but there is no reason to cancel the vote on the resolution disapproving the agreement as specified in the Corker Act and as promised by the House leadership for the last 6 weeks.

H. Res. 411 rightly disputes September 17 as the deadline for congressional action to stop this treaty from taking effect, and I support that resolution, but it cannot authoritatively settle this dispute. That leaves the deadline as an open question, and this House must not let that deadline pass without definite action as provided by Corker.

I oppose the act because it guts the Treaty Clause of the Constitution that requires treaties to be ratified by a two-thirds vote of the U.S. Senate. Despite the President's contention that this is an agreement and not a treaty, the fact that it explicitly modifies the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty makes it obvious that it requires Senate ratification.

Unfortunately, the Congress overwhelmingly approved the Corker Act, establishing a very different framework with respect to this particular treaty. Instead of a two-thirds vote of the Senate to ratify it, Corker, in essence, requires two-thirds of both Houses to reject it through a resolution of disapproval, an almost impossible threshold.

Under Corker, the resolution of disapproval is the specific legal act required to reject this treaty. This is what the leadership had promised the House would vote on this week, until yesterday. Now we are to vote on a legally meaningless bill to approve the treaty that is expected to be voted down. It is specifically designed to have no legal effect but merely to give Members political cover.

Thus, the House will fail to take action on a resolution of disapproval called for under the Corker Act by the disputed September 17 deadline. On that deadline, the President will declare victory, implement the treaty, and the Congress will be left sputtering. The world will correctly interpret this dereliction as a capitulation by the House to this treaty. And years from now, maybe, possibly, the courts will intervene to declare the President's action illegal or maybe not.

Mr. Speaker, the House is right to dispute the September 17 deadline because clearly the President did not comply with provisions of Corker and provide the full text of the side agreements to the Congress; but the House is dead wrong to refuse to take action on the resolution of disapproval prior to the disputed deadline to assure that the House has spoken clearly, unambiguously, and indisputably according to the provisions of the Corker Act that the Congress, itself, enacted in May. Once it has acted, the House can still dispute whether the President's submission meets the requirements of Corker, but it will not have this momentous question dangling unresolved and in dispute.

The argument we hear for this course is that the Senate is unlikely to take up a resolution of disapproval; therefore, we should hold the President to the letter of Corker. Well, what the Senate does is up to the Senate; but for our part, the House has a moral obligation to act within the undisputed timeframe to legally reject this dangerous action by the President.

There is little doubt that this treaty will trigger a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. The leaders of Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia have already made that abundantly clear. There is little doubt it is unverifiable.

There is no doubt it will release $150 billion of frozen assets to Iran with which it can finance its terrorist operations and continue its nuclear research.

I fear the Iran nuclear agreement may be just as significant to the fate of the 21st century as the Munich Agreement was to the 20th century. The American people and the world deserve a clear, unambiguous, and indisputable act of the House to repudiate this act. What the House leadership is now pursuing falls far short of this moral imperative.

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