Congress did something.
But it wasn’t about governing. It was about displaying total, complete spite for our president and about the appearance of being patriotic and supportive of the families of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack.
Yet when you strip all of the appearance away, the congressional override of President Barack Obama’s recent veto of a bill allowing 9/11 families to sue Saudi Arabia for any role in the terrorist plot was, in reality, not only a rebuke of Obama, but also a rebuke of all Americans concerned about terrorism.
Empowerment for the families of 9/11 may sound good on the surface, but only on the surface. Countries are often allies in one way or another, and when they are allies they have reciprocal agreements. They understand that what goes around comes around. When Americans sue Saudis and their country, Saudis sue Americans and the United States, likely causing complications – especially for our armed forces.
Freeing American citizens to sue those countries just adds one more layer of distrust and discord in an already divisive world 15 years after the terrorist attack – all in the names of families who already have gotten $2 million each in U.S. victims’ fund money. Already, Saudi Arabia has warned the law could force them to sell off hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of American assets to avoid them from being seized in court settlements.
After the vote, members of the Senate who voted to override the president’s veto conceded that they did not fully support the legislation they had just voted for. In fact, the lawmakers who wrote the bill have said they never intended it to pass. And our own Republican Sen. Bob Corker said he worries about the repercussions of a bill that “has problems.”
“I do want to say I don’t think the Senate nor House has functioned in an appropriate manner as it relates to a very important piece of legislation,” said Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in an 8-minute C-span address. “I have tremendous concerns about the sovereign immunity procedures that would be set in place by the countries as a result of this vote.”
And then Corker voted for it anyway, without playing a role in the hearings and debate that he had just said had gone lacking, according to The New York Times.
Corker and other lawmakers were concerned. The president was concerned enough to veto the bill. But did our lawmakers go back and rework the bill to fix clear problems? No. They just rallied to make a dig at Obama’s audacity to veto their work. It wasn’t a vote for 9/11 victims. It wasn’t even a statement about terrorism.
Remember this is the Congress that won’t even pass a law to prevent the sale of guns to people on the FBI’s terrorist watch list. Still they’ll pass a law to make international diplomacy harder in Saudi Arabia – all to thumb their congressional noses at the president.
A large number of Democrats sided with Republicans to override the veto. Only one senator, Harry Reid, D-Nev., sided with Obama; 97 others voted to override. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., did not vote.
In the House, the veto override was approved 348 to 77. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Chattanooga, voted to override. Scott DesJarlais, R-South Pittsburg, and Jim Cooper, D-Nashville, voted nay, according to congressional roll call websites.
Congress took this show-boat action after Obama, along with Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter and Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all wrote letters to Congress warning of the dangers of overriding the veto.
Unbelievable.
The president and his allies have vowed to find a way to tweak the legislation later, according to The New York Times.
And on Thursday afternoon, Corker again took to the C-span video camera on the floor of the Senate to say there will be an effort to rewrite the bill. At the end of his five-minute address, he noted the absence of a quorum in the Senate chamber.