Was I taught wrong in school after all these years? If Congress votes against this Iran deal, the President can veto a “NO” vote??? Have the rules changed? I thought if Congress votes “NO”, a proposal DIES! The President can only veto a “YES” vote from Congress with which POTUS is opposed. So, again, I ask…was I taught wrong?
The President can’t “veto a no vote” since that’s not something that makes sense. The President may veto any bill or joint resolution, but to do so that bill must pass both houses.
What they’re talking about with regard to the Iran deal is vetoing any bill that would undo the results of the diplomatic negotiations with Iran.
IOW,
It helps if you understand what is being considered here. The president has authority to remove the sanctions on Iran without congress, as part of the normal functions related to UN security council resolutions. Congress decided to pass a law giving them the ability to restrain him in case of a bad deal, and that passed with a massive majority, not too far from unanimous.
However, to actually do that, they have to put forth a resolution of disapproval. Which he will no doubt veto. Essentially, what we’re seeing is the system of checks and balances in action. Congress can’t interfere with the president’s constitutionally protected right to conduct diplomacy unless they pass a law, over his veto.
The sanctions regime against Iran, by one count, is based on nine separate pieces of legislation and 25 executive orders signed by previous Presidents. President Obama can of course repeal the executive orders any time he wants. He cannot repeal the legislation. However, the terms of many clauses within the various pieces of legislation allow presidential waivers or determinations that give the President effective power to grant unilateral sanctions relief.
In light of which, Congress passed the Corker bill in April, suspending all such power to grant waivers and determinations, with respect to Iran, until 30 days after an agreement on sanctions relief is submitted to Congress. The idea being, that if Congress dislikes such an agreement, they will have 30 days to pass legislation permanently barring unilateral Presidential action with respect to Iran sanctions.
The permanent ban is the potential “vote against Iran sanctions (removal)”, and the potential Presidential veto.
If the bill says “we’re gonna do xxx” and Congress votes yes, the President can veto it.
If the bill says “we’re gonna do xxx” and Congress votes no, the President cannot ‘reverse veto’ it.
If the bill says “we’re NOT gonna do xxx” and Congress votes yes, the President CAN veto it.
That third one describes the situation with Iran.
I don’t think so. A basic principal of parliamentary law is that a motion is out of order if, if passed, it does not change the status quo. Thus Congress never has a bill to NOT do something.
Why isn’t this classified as a treaty wherein the Constitution allows the Senate to ratify?
Didn’t the SCOTUS recently determine that the president has sole power to negotiate treaty’s and set foreign policy?
Bob
The way you square that circle is with a bill that says “We (Congress) know the President wants to do X, but we’re going to do the opposite-of-X instead”. Which bill they certainly can pass and which bill the President certainly can threaten to veto or actually veto.
The opposite of action is not necessarily the status quo, but rather some different action in a different direction.
A vote to not do something CAN change the status quo.
For example: If the President orders the white house staff to paint the front of the White House purple, Congress can pass a bill prohibiting them from doing it. They could even pass it preemptively. They could make it a felony to apply non-white paint to the White House, or they could prohibit the use of federal funds to pay for any paint which isn’t white, or both. And then the President could veto that bill.
Before the bill was passed, the status quo was that it wasn’t illegal to paint the White House purple. After the bill passes, now it IS illegal. That’s a change.
But that is not what sbunny8 implied. She implied that Congress could write a bill for a new apportionment that said something like “We will not give $2,000,000,000 to fund the war in Afghanistan.” That motion is out of order since a yes vote maintains the status quo of no new apportionment. It would also be out order given the confusion a member may have if they want to vote to apportion the money (do I vote yes or no?).
sbunny8 implies that if the above motion passed, the President can veto it and force Congress to apportion the money.
Instead Congress does what you suggest. They fail to pass a bill appropriating the money which the President cannot veto.
Bolded for emphasis
You contradict yourself. In you case, Congress voted to do something, make painting the White House illegal - thus the law has changed. A vote to NOT do something would be
Resolved: Congress shall take no action in regards to the paint color of the Executive Mansion.
If that bill passes, has anything changed?
You are apparently confusing a bill to NOT do something with a bill to PROHIBIT something.
I was reading the NY Times article and this is what it said.
Couple of notes:
The way they discuss “voting down” seems to imply a vote to NOT accept the accords and that can be vetoed - but that’s not how it’s done. The bill would be to accept the accords and if voted down i.e. failed to pass, that cannot be vetoed.
Apparently Obama has enough votes to override his own veto. 
If the Republicans are so against this and the House does need to vote on it (guess it’s not a treaty), then wouldn’t the Hastert Rule apply?
As a general rule of thumb, treaties establish new laws relating to other countries. Executive agreements are deals that are within the scope of the President’s power. The State Department and the White House contend that this agreement is generally within the President’s statutory and constitutional powers. The State Department does have legal guidance going back for many years on tries when a treaty is necessary - suffice it to say that unsurprisingly the Executive Branch believes that the President can do a lot of things that don’t trigger the need for a treaty.
The Constitution says the President has the sole power to negotiate treaties, subject to Senate approval. The case you’re thinking of relates to Congress passing a law requiring passports to recognize Jerusalem as part of Israel. Presidents have refused to declare that. The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the President took precedence in determining these kinds of foreign policy questions.
No, I meant more along the lines of: The President wants to spend about $20,000,000 to transfer all the prisoners out of Gitmo and shut down the prison but before he can get it done, Congress writes a bill that says something like “We will not give any money at all to shut down Gitmo”. Then the President could veto it. And then Congress could try to override the veto.
I agree that would be silly. But that’s not what I was talking about.
Except that’s not how it is done.
For one reason the motion violates parliamentary law.
Second, why would you give the President a chance to veto something you don’t want to do.
Third, and your example shows exactly why this won’t work, if your motion fails, how much money does Congress appropriate? $1? $1,000,000?
Here’s how you would decide that motion is out of order. If the motion passes, would there be any difference than if the bill were never introduced. Let’s see.
Bill not introduced = no money appropriated to shut down Gitmo
Bill passes = no money appropriated to shut down Gitmo
Since passing the motion accomplishes the same outcome as doing nothing, the motion is out of order.
That is very succinct! Yet, I never considered a Bill written in the negative. I worked in the patent office as a Patent Examiner, and when starting out, I asked if an invention could be described in the negative to state what it IS NOT as opposed to what IT IS. The best answer I was given is that “this is just not done”. And yet, here we see Congress has nonetheless done it. Interesting.
To all who posted: Very interesting discussion! And while on this topic, but more along the lines of some posts about the powers of the President defined by SCOTUS, treaties ratified by the Senate…and whatever you’d call this Iran deal…
What stops the President from making all his actions Executive Orders? And, do Executive Orders have a similar check and balance process, or is it only an indirect check-and-balance process in the sense that the President risks losing political allies? And, is this usually where the opposing party will start yelling the President is assuming more power than the US Constitution grants?
As we saw recently with Obama’s orders on immigration, the court will decide his orders are illegal and direct the agency not to carry them out.
Or congress makes them against the law.
Or impeaches him.
Executive orders are normally used in non-controversial ways so there isn’t a huge amount of debate over them, but there are definitely tactics usable to keep presidents in check.
I am not sure what this “parliamentary law” is that you refer to. There is no such thing under the U.S. Constitution. To be sure, there are rules of procedure established by both houses of Congress, but the Congress can and does ignore those rules on a whim. Unless it’s something really egregious on something that is proscribed in the Constitution (e.g., engrossing a bill without actually voting on it), the courts are loathe to interfere with the rules and procedure of the Congress. There may even be a rule somewhere for the Senate or House (or both) proscribing what you say (no motion allowed that does not change the status quo), but unless a member raises a point of order, there is nothing under the Constitution prohibiting such a law being passed by Congress. It has hard seeing the courts even reviewing such a law. What would be somebody’s standing to challenge such a law on something that doesn’t change anything? It certainly would be a waste of everybody’s time and money, but there’s nothing preventing such a law from passing.