WASHINGTON -- Democrats on Wednesday blocked the Senate's first spending bill of the year in a last-minute fight over a Republican effort to undercut the nuclear deal with Iran and scuttle U.S. plans to buy Iranian "heavy water."
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., offered an amendment to the energy and water bill that would thwart President Barack Obama's administration if it tries to buy more heavy water from Iran. The administration completed an $8.6 million deal last Friday to buy about 35 tons of heavy water from Iran.
The sale will help Iran meet the terms of last year's landmark deal in which Iran agreed to curb its atomic program in exchange for billions of dollars in sanctions relief. Heavy water, formed with a hydrogen isotope, is a key component for one kind of nuclear reactor and has a variety of research, medical and industrial applications.
Democrats called the amendment a "poison pill" that would draw a veto from Obama. A vote to move forward with the energy and water bill failed to reach 60 votes needed to continue, falling short 50-46.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the administration was gratified the amendment did not advance. Earnest took a swipe at Cotton, who last year antagonized the White House by writing a letter signed by 46 other senators telling Iranian leaders that a nuclear deal with Obama could be undone by the next president.
"Sen. Cotton is certainly no expert when it comes to heavy water. I'm confident that he couldn't differentiate heavy water from sparkling water," Earnest said. "His focus is on undermining the effective implementation of this agreement that prevents Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon."
Cotton responded on Twitter, telling Earnest he was at least half-right: "I don't know much about sparkling water. It isn't served in Army, unlike in your ritzy West Wing." Cotton served on active duty in Iraq and Afghanistan before being elected to Congress.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has repeatedly made an orderly appropriations process his No. 1 goal for 2016, a key element in his election-year effort to show voters that Republicans can govern.
After the vote, McConnell angrily claimed that Democrats had found "yet a new way to blow up the appropriations process." He vowed to continue consideration of the bill to "work past this snag" and to bring up more spending bills.
But Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said lawmakers were blindsided by Cotton's amendment, adding that the proposal breaks a bipartisan agreement not to include contentious riders in the spending bill.
"Why can't he wait," Feinstien asked, to put the amendment on a separate bill that is not part of the appropriations process? "I don't want it to end this way," she said.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., chairman of an energy and water subcommittee, said Cotton was "entirely within his rights" to offer the amendment. Alexander and other lawmakers faulted the administration for failing to explain the heavy-water purchase or give lawmakers a heads-up before it went through.
"The U.S. Department of Energy, without any consultation with anybody in the Senate that I know about, without the Intelligence, Armed Services, Foreign Relations committees, decided it was going to buy heavy water from Iran," Alexander said.
There are no current plans for further U.S. purchases of heavy water, and Cotton said his amendment would simply "hold this administration to its promise by ensuring that taxpayer dollars cannot be used again for the same purpose. We've given the terror-sponsoring Iranian regime enough concessions at the risk of our security. We should not further subsidize its enrichment activity by making repeated purchases of this material."
Cotton added that he doesn't "want to see the appropriations process end" and that he's "committed to work with good faith" to "try to reach some solution on this bill or any others, as well as ensure that the U.S. taxpayer is not subsidizing a critical component of Iran's nuclear industry."
In an interview, Cotton reaffirmed that stance.
"We're still working with the Democrats to try to get a vote on my amendment in some form, whether it's on this legislation or as a stand-alone bill," he said.
"Based on their comments, they [the Democrats] think this is some kind of effort to continue to undermine or renegotiate the terms of the Iran deal. Nothing could be further from the truth," he added. "I have no intent at present to offer further amendments related to Iran on the appropriations bills. Something may arise but at this point I have no intent."
A sales agreement signed Friday in Vienna calls for the Energy Department's Isotope Program to purchase the heavy water for $8.6 million from a subsidiary of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran. The heavy water will be stored at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and then resold on the commercial market.
Heavy water is not radioactive but has research and medical applications and also can be used to produce weapons-grade plutonium. Under the nuclear deal, Iran is allowed to use heavy water in its modified Arak nuclear reactor but must sell any excess supply of both heavy water and enriched uranium on the international market.
Information for this article was contributed by Matthew Daly, Kathleen Hennessey and Andrew Taylor of The Associated Press and by Erik Wasson, James Rowley, Steven T. Dennis, Angela Greiling Keane and Laura Curtis of Bloomberg News; and by Frank Lockwood of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
A Section on 04/28/2016