[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Pages 5517-5518]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            VOTE EXPLANATION

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I was necessarily absent from this 
evening's vote on cloture on the substitute amendment No. 3801 to the 
Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations bill, 
H.R. 2028, which was not agreed to.
  On rollcall vote No. 66, had I been present, I would have voted to 
oppose cloture. The junior Senator from Arkansas has proposed an 
amendment which would grind the Senate's appropriations process to a 
halt while undermining U.S. national security. This amendment is simply 
another attempt to undermine the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, 
JCPOA, that has verifiably eliminated the threat of Iran's nuclear 
program to the United States, Israel, and the international community. 
In fact, the junior Senator from Arkansas attempted to undermine this 
national security agreement before it was even negotiated by leading a 
partisan letter to Iran's Supreme Leader, implying that Congress would

[[Page 5518]]

not honor any potential diplomatic resolution to the conflict. The 
unprecedented attempt failed.
  Now that this agreement has been implemented, he is trying to 
undermine it again by attempting to prohibit the Department of Energy 
from taking actions which support the deal and remove nuclear-related 
materials from Iran--actions which, if needed, are important to U.S. 
national security. As such, I strongly oppose this effort and continue 
to support the forceful implementation of the JCPOA in order to 
continue to prevent Iran from ever possessing a nuclear weapon.

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