Senate Votes No on Saudi Arms - Engel Must Follow on NDAA

The Senate has voted to block the Trump-Pompeo move to cram through Saudi-UAE arms deals with the fake Iran emergency delcaration.

Now Eliot Engel, the top foreign policy Dem in the House, must include this prohibition in the "must pass" National Defense Authorization Act.
Vote in the poll at Daily Kos 

The Senate voted today against the Saudi-UAE arms deals that Trump and Pompeo are trying to cram through with the fake Iran emergency declaration. This is a step towards ending the Saudi-UAE war in Yemen, which has created the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, with the Saudi regime deliberately trying to push the civilian population of Yemen into famine, as Chris Murphy noted on the Senate floor two years ago.

The House Democratic leadership has promised to follow the Senate’s lead. If past is prologue, Trump will veto. Senators can force an override vote, but may not be able reach 67 votes to override.

But even if the Senate can’t find 67 votes to override, there’s another path to prohibiting these arms deals, which is to cram whatever passes the Senate and the House into the “must pass” National Defense Authorization Act when the House considers NDAA on the floor in July. So – contrary to what a lot of the press is implying, including NYT– it’s not the end of the road if the Senate doesn’t reach 67 votes against the arms deals. The road can continue by the House passing the same resolutions of disapproval as the Senate and then by cramming those prohibitions into the NDAA.

This would still leave the problem of attaching these prohibitions to NDAA in the Senate. McConnell threatens to block any “controversial” NDAA amendment, and McConnell’s definition of “controversial” includes “anything opposed by Trump.” And it still leaves the problem of what happens in the POTUS vs. Congress endgame on NDAA.

But: Trump has already thrown down a veto threat on the DoD appropriations bill that just passed the House. Why not add Saudi-UAE arms deal prohibitions to the veto-bait Christmas tree? There is nothing to lose. It's got as much right to be there as the veto-bait that's already there.

Eventually the government will stay open or re-open. Eventually the House, the Senate, and the White House will come to a deal. When they reach a deal, we'll get to see what Democrats fought for in the deal and what they didn't fight for. More Republicans will have voted for restrictions on U.S. participation in the Saudi-UAE war in Yemen than other things that Democrats will fight for. 

Therefore, it should be easier for Congressional Democratic leaders to win on this in the endgame than it is for them to win on other things. If they win on other things but not on this, we’ll know that Democratic leaders, especially Eliot Engel, the top foreign policy Democrat in the House, didn’t care about this very much.

Here’s the first step: we need to get the House Democratic leadership – especially House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Eliot Engel - to commit to pass the Senate resolutions of disapproval on the Saudi-UAE arms deals immediately and to attach these prohibitions to NDAA in July.

If you agree, vote yes in the poll at Daily Kos.

Thanks for all you do to help make U.S. foreign policy more just, 

Sarah Burns, Hassan El-Tayyab, and Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy

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