"I do think it's important that Congress give it the Good Housekeeping seal of approval," Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn said of a deal between President Donald Trump and North Korea. | John Shinkle/POLITICO Republicans demand vote on any North Korea deal Many GOP senators are skeptical that Trump can reach an agreement with Kim Jong Un to completely denuclearize the Korean peninsula.

Congress is determined to have the final say over any deal President Donald Trump strikes with North Korea.

As Trump signed a joint statement with Kim Jong Un that offered few details on how the North Korean leader would make good on his vow to denuclearize, Republicans on Capitol Hill said Tuesday that they want and expect the White House to submit any final agreement for their approval.


And that means the president and his team will have to work overtime to sell it.

What's at stake is more than just the terms of a deal with a dictator who Trump praised as "talented" and "a very good negotiator." It’s whether any agreement will outlast the current administration.

"If the president reaches a significant agreement with North Korea, I hope it takes the form of a treaty," said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). "Which route that the administration takes will be up to them but I do believe it will need to come to Congress in some form."

His Democratic counterpart, Chuck Schumer of New York, said it's too early to determine how and whether Congress should consider any agreement with North Korea.

Congressional Republicans were enraged that President Barack Obama didn’t submit the 2015 Iran nuclear deal as a treaty and instead signed legislation, with Democratic support, giving lawmakers a chance to block the agreement. That vote failed in the Senate, but the GOP argued that Obama had turned the diplomatic process on its head by avoiding the 67-vote threshold required for treaties in the upper chamber.

Sign up here for POLITICO Huddle A daily play-by-play of congressional news in your inbox. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Now Republicans hope Trump won’t make the same mistake, but will instead forge an enduring accord that his successor can’t just rip up, as the president himself did with the Iran deal.

"I think the lesson" of the Iran deal, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) told reporters, "is that if you try to do things unilaterally or just with the executive branch, that they don't last long."

"I'm not hung up on the form" that Trump chooses to submit any North Korea deal to the Hill, Cornyn added, "but I do think it's important that Congress give it the Good Housekeeping seal of approval, because I think that would ensure longevity."

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), a leading proponent of forcing Obama to submit the Iran deal as a treaty, agreed that "the administration ought to go into this thing saying we’ve got to create a treaty."

"Again, let’s do a deal that does complete verifiable, irreversible dismantlement, and I have a hard time not believing that thing's going to be ratified," Johnson said in an interview. "And if it can’t be ratified, there’s probably something wrong with the deal."

Beneath the Republican insistence that Trump submit any pact with Pyongyang to Congress is skepticism among many in the president's party about his public display of trust in Kim. The leaders' joint photo op had already sparked concerns about legitimizing a propaganda-happy North Korean leader with an abysmal human rights record. Trump's assent to ending joint military exercises with South Korea left some in the GOP even more wary.

Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), who also agreed that the Senate should take up any future North Korea deal, said Trump's praise for Kim "isn't, certainly, the way I would describe a dictator, despot, tyrant."

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) sounded a similar note, tweeting that Trump's lavish praise for Kim may have been strategic but didn't acknowledge the North Korean's autocratic record.

Cornyn gave Trump more leeway to publicly compliment the North Korean leader in the interest of achieving his goal of denuclearization.

"I think he's just trying to create the conditions where there's some rapport between them," the Texan said. "And if that's what it takes to get a deal to denuclearize North Korea, I think it's worth it."

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) also urged colleagues to give Trump more breathing room to "do what he’s done an extraordinary job of: getting people to the table and talking for the first time ever," though he added that "it would be good to have something that Congress can" vote on.

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), who agreed that any final North Korea deal should be "more treaty-based," took particular issue with the suggestion that Trump might move U.S. troops out of the region at Kim's request.

The Trump-Kim summit "was successful — yes, absolutely — but as far as moving troops off the Korean Peninsula? We need to stay there," she said.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has signaled that he hopes to pass on any forthcoming agreement with Pyongyang to Congress as a treaty, which won him praise from Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) — "assuming there’s actually something to turn into a treaty."

“I’m not even sure what happened last night so... I think we need to talk to Pompeo and understand what’s actually happened," Corker added.

Democrats were even more cautious about the outcome of the summit, offering Trump praise for pursuing diplomacy but warning that he may already have given up too much to Kim.

"This is a long way from anything that's verifiable," Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the intelligence committee's top Democrat, said in an interview. "North Korea, a winner. The West and America? It's too early to tell."

Speculating on a future congressional vote on a North Korea agreement would put "the cart way ahead of the horse," Warner added, but "I would think that this president who was so critical of the Iran deal would want Congress' approval if and when there's ever something to vote on."

Despite the clear-as-mud timetable, some of Trump's strongest allies in the Senate are looking forward to prodding Democrats to support the president's diplomatic efforts.

"What I think is going to happen is that, eventually, the president is going to take a document and try to ... take it before the Senate," Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) told reporters.

"Trump haters in the Senate having to vote against him" on a North Korea agreement, Inhofe predicted, "might be kind of interesting to watch."