Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer asked fellow lawmakers to voice vote approval of a bill to impose new sanctions on Turkey, which has invaded Syria and attacked America’s Kurdish allies after President Trump withdrew U.S. troops from the region.
“There is no quicker or more powerful way to pressure the president to reverse the damage he has caused than to pass a bipartisan joint resolution directly to his desk,” Schumer, D-New York, argued on the Senate floor.
Schumer’s move to immediately pass the bill was blocked by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, who opposes U.S. military action in Turkey.
Paul requested the Senate take up his own bill, which would ban U.S. arm sales to Turkey.
The Syrian sanctions bill passed with a bipartisan vote in the House, but Senate lawmakers may not take it up because they are awaiting Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s plan to sanction the country.
Democrats and Republicans have urged President Trump to reverse his decision to move 28 U.S. military advisers away from Syria’s eastern border.
The move prompted Turkey’s invasion and has threatened the security of 70,000 Islamic State terrorists and their families who are being held there, Democrats and some GOP lawmakers believe.
Schumer said ISIS prisoners would escape and pose a terrorism threat to America.
“The president’s incompetence has put American lives in danger,” Schumer argued. “The longer we wait, the more Kurds will die, our allies, the more ISIS prisoners will escape and the greater the danger, hour by hour, day by day.”
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jim Risch said Turkey had long been moving to invade Syria and had amassed 30,000 troops along the Syrian border.
Trump’s decision to move the 28 military personnel did not cause the aggression and is a political statement, said the Idaho Republican. “This is a war that has been going on between these two groups for centuries.”
