Sen. Warner announced on the floor today that "Dubai Ports World has agreed to turn over all of its operations at U.S. ports to a United States entity" in an effort to make the deal more palpable for American lawmakers.
CNN and Fox are reporting it, but it's developing.
Details from Fox:
The Thursday announcement was a blow for Democrats, who were pushing for a Senate vote on an amendment that would halt the deal. A few minutes later, the Senate voted to ignore GOP requests to wait until a 45-day review of the deal is completed before they try to stop it."This should make the whole issue go away," Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said, holding up a copy of the DP World press release. "The [review] process is underway ... we should not have to interrupt it on the floor of the United States Senate."
If they succeeded in forcing an up-or-down vote on the amendment, Democrats could then claim a big election year win in the area of national security — an area Republicans generally have a stronger track record on.
Harry Reid looked really silly and deflated in the Democrat press conference, saying meekly, "we want an up-or-down vote" and bashing the administration for very not analogous "failures" in Katrina's wake. Maybe Expose the Left will have video up later.
Via Michelle, Mark Levin notes the silliness of the Reid response and the political gains for Republicans:
Thanks goes to the House Republicans. The Appropriations Committee vote was so overwhelming, that the UAE got the message and is now pulling the ports deal. Hence, there will be no confrontation with the president, or embarrassing veto override. And the reaction from Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, and the appeasement wing of the Senate is hilarious: Reid is demanding a vote on a deal that no longer exists and Schumer is insisting on seeing the details of the now defunct deal. It's not easy being a weak-on-defense.
Ian does have the video of Reid.