The House overwhelmingly voted to condemn Donald Trump's withdrawal of troops from Syria Wednesday, with 129 Republicans joining Democrats to pass the nonbinding resolution. After Trump's meltdown in a meeting with congressional leadership following that vote, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell won't bring that resolution to the floor. In fact, he had it blocked Thursday when Sen. Chuck Schumer tried to bring it up for unanimous consent.
McConnell said Thursday he wants to do something "stronger." Undoubtedly, that means something that does not directly rebuke Trump. "It's important we make a strong, forward-looking strategic statement," he said on the floor. "For that reason, my preference would be for something even stronger than the resolution the House passed yesterday, which has some serious weaknesses. […] It is backward looking and curiously silent on the issue of whether to actually sustain a military presence in Syria, perhaps to spare Democrats from having to go on record on this key question." By "backward looking," he means it looks back to Trump making the decision to create this crisis.
Schumer disagreed, obviously. "The vast majority of House Republicans, 129 to be exact, condemned the president's decision on Syria," Schumer said. "We can quibble about the language, but I have no doubt we can agree on the basic message. We can vote on the Senate resolution today. Time is of the essence."
It's not clear at this point what, if anything, McConnell will allow a vote on. There are a couple of competing bills in the works to sanction Turkey for the incursion, including a bipartisan one from Sen. Lindsey Graham, the most overwrought among Republican critics of the withdrawal, and Sen. Chris Van Hollen. But now that Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have negotiated away the threat of new sanctions for now, McConnell can keep on holding off any vote.
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