Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell labeled the House resolution condemning President Trump’s pullback of troops from Syria as insufficient and announced his intention to introduce a counter-proposal.

Last week, the House voted on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis, 354-60, to condemn Mr. Trump’s pull-back of troops in Syria. Mr. McConnell labeled it wrong-headed in remarks on the Senate floor Tuesday.

“Unfortunately, the resolution crafted by House Democrats is insufficient,” the Kentucky Republican said. “It’s not so much wrong, as it is insufficient.”

Mr. McConnell suggested that the resolution put forward by the House last week attempted to “paper over” and “dance around” the real issues about the troop level in Syria out of a need to provide cover for Democratic presidential primary politics.

Mr. McConnell also cautioned his colleagues on both sides of the aisle against turning toward sanctions as a primary means of addressing the Syria crisis, saying the Senate must proceed with caution against using sanctions as its “first, last and only resort” for implementing foreign policy.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, said Tuesday that Democrats would still push for the adoption of the House resolution. Mr. Schumer noted that if the resolution was good enough for “hard” foreign policy hawks such as Rep. Liz Cheney, Wyoming Republican, and other GOP leaders in the House, then the resolution should satisfy the Senate as well.

“We’ll keep trying to pass the House resolution here in the Senate because it means we could send a bill to the president’s desk that shows him a bipartisan majority of Congress is against his reckless decision in Syria,” Mr. Schumer said. “This is extremely, extremely troubling, and I am very angry.”

Sign up for Daily Newsletters Manage Newsletters

Copyright © 2020 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.