NPR with a Great Explainer and Graphics on Iran Deal Vote

Here:

Here’s how it works. Instead of voting on whether to approve the Iran deal, Congress votes on whether to disapprove.

If they disapprove, the president can veto their disapproval. And under the normal rules, it would take two-thirds of the House and the Senate to override the veto. That makes all the difference.

We asked NPR editor Ron Elving how this changes the number of votes the president’s side needs.

“If it were normal legislation and not a treaty, you would need 60 to shut off debate and then 51 to prevail,” he said. For a treaty, 67 votes would be needed.

So how many does the president need for this deal? Thirty-four, said Elving. “That’s the essence of what we’re talking about here. If the Senate gives the president 34 votes to sustain his veto, he has won and it’s over.”

The president can also win without a veto, if a minority of 41 senators sustains a filibuster. All the checks and balances that make congressional action difficult work in the president’s favor because his opponents, not Obama, are the ones who need Congress to pass something.

As of Wednesday, 34 Democrats had already voiced their support for the deal, with a number of others undeclared.

That means even if Republicans all vote no — and even if Democratic skeptics like Sen. Charles Schumer of New York also vote no — it looks like the president will have enough votes to prevail.

“It is a mechanism by which lawmakers can deal with the contradictions that reality presents them. You can call it cynical, you can call it pragmatic, but it gets the job done,” Elving said, “both in the sense of keeping the government going forward and in the sense of solving the political problem of the individual lawmaker.”

 

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