The amendment from Sen. Tom Cotton threatened to halt the first appropriations bill of the season before being defeated by Democrats. | AP Photo Senate kills Cotton’s Iran amendment – and rescues spending bill

Senate Democrats killed the GOP's latest attack on President Barack Obama's Iran policies on Wednesday, righting the wobbly annual spending process that is the cornerstone of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s agenda.

An amendment from Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) that would prohibit the United States from buying heavy water left over from Iran’s nuclear program threatened to halt the first appropriations bill of the season, an energy and water funding proposal, and, by extension, the entire process. But under a deal brokered by Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), the Senate voted on the Cotton amendment at an unattainable 60-vote threshold.


The Cotton amendment fell short on a 57-42 vote.

But while the water spending measure was allowed to proceed, the dispute opened a fissure among Republicans who have been in lockstep on Iran policy since unanimously voting against the nuclear deal last year. Alexander said the amendment would have opened up the leftovers of Iran’s nuclear program to the open market — rather than bringing them to the U.S., where they can be put to peaceful purposes.

“I’m opposed to the Iran agreement,” Alexander said this week. “I’m also opposed to North Korea or other countries [being able to] buy heavy water that could be used to make plutonium or nuclear weapons. It raises a whole complex set of national security issues.”

Cotton responded in an interview Tuesday that without his amendment, “we’re just creating for Iran the incentive to manufacture more heavy water.”

“He and I disagree on the merits,” Cotton said of Alexander.

The Senate dispute presages a difficult race to finish all 12 annual appropriations bills by October. Republicans say that Democrats are looking for an excuse to derail the process and undermine the GOP’s good government bona fides in an election year, while Democrats say McConnell is struggling to keep his troops in line.

Democrats and some Republicans said they were blindsided by Cotton’s amendment.

“They need to quit obstructing with poison pill amendments,” said Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, a member of Democratic leadership.

Cotton’s measure would have blocked, starting Oct. 1, any new Energy Department purchases of Iran’s heavy water, which could otherwise be used to produce material suitable for a nuclear bomb.

Cotton responded that “poison pill” is “Capitol Hill code” for an amendment that Democrats oppose but has the votes to pass.

For many Democrats, letting Cotton’s amendment pass would have opened the door for more challenges to the Iranian agreement that lifted United Nations sanctions on the country in exchange for dismantling equipment that could be used to build nuclear weapons.

While his amendment was not seen as a serious threat to the Iran deal, some in the GOP sympathized with Cotton’s efforts and said they felt they’d run out of options.

“With an administration that won’t talk to you or consider anything you say, a vote’s the best way [to send a message]. … It’s the only way,” Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) said.

Cotton said he was motivated to act after an announcement last month that the Energy Department would make a one-time purchase of 32 tons of Iranian heavy water, a substance that can be used in nuclear reactor research as well as in the development of nuclear weapons. As part of last year’s deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program, Tehran agreed to cap its inventory of heavy water by either selling it, diluting it or destroying it.

The Arkansas Republican’s amendment wouldn’t stop the purchase already in progress, but would prevent the Obama administration from buying the material in the future — which Cotton says would limit the amount of taxpayer dollars he fears Iran will funnel to terrorist organizations.

Last year, Cotton used a similar tactic with an amendment on a bill that allowed for congressional review of the Iran nuclear deal, upending a bipartisan deal on amendment votes.

The Democratic resistance to Cotton’s amendment had already blocked approval of the energy and water appropriations bill three times, including in a vote on Monday.

And Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has repeatedly suggested that the freshman senator’s insistence on a vote for the measure showed a lack of patience, and that his request ran afoul of the chamber’s customs.

“I can remember year after year after year when I had an amendment on a bill and I never got a vote for it,” Feinstein, the top Democrat on energy and water spending programs, said this week. “So, that’s not an unusual thing to happen. What has been an unusual thing is for one person to take down a bill.”

Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) supported Cotton’s amendment and said that he and other lawmakers were developing “broader legislation to deal with Iran” that will be out “very soon.”

DOE’s Oak Ridge national lab is taking the heavy water under last year’s deal with Iran and will sell some of it to universities and hospitals for medical research.

