Congress Overrides Obama's Veto

For the first time in President Obama's tenure, Congress voted on Wednesday to override his veto, overriding the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, the bill that would allow families of the victims of Sept. 11th to sue Saudi Arabia. It was overwhelmingly bipartisan, with the Senate voting 97 to 1 and the House voting 348 to 77. According to Steinhauer, Mazzetti, and Davis' article, "The law allows families of the Sept. 11 victims to alter lawsuits already underway — or file new suits — to directly sue Saudi Arabia and to demand documents and other evidence. It amends a 1976 law that grants foreign countries broad immunity from American lawsuits. Now nations can be sued in federal court if they are found to have played any role in terrorist attacks that killed Americans on United States soil." The confusing part of this is that the Sept. 11 investigatory commission found, "'no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded' Al Qaeda, the terror group that carried out the attacks."

Understandably, President Obama was not thrilled about the results of the vote, saying that he had hoped that Congress would have done what's hard."[I]f you’re perceived as voting against 9/11 families right before an election, not surprisingly, that’s a hard vote for people to take," he said, and that sums up the difficulty of Congressional voting while running for re-election. 34 senators and all 435 members of the House are on the ballot in November, and now more than ever, their actions in their job are under scrutiny. Now, instead of the results of the bill taking precedence, the optics of how one voted becomes the number one reason for actions, which can make it pretty difficult for a member of Congress to do his or her job. If this bill had come up for vote another time, maybe the results would have been different; maybe the president would have been able to sway more members of Congress; maybe it wouldn't have gotten to the president's desk in the first place. But one thing we know for sure, in an election year, substance matters less; what matters more is how the public sees you. And, for good or bad, this can- and has- heavily dictate how our public servants act. This is a practice that has been in motion for many years but with campaigns and elections on the precipice of huge change, this is going to play an even bigger role. And it is up to us as voters to decide which matters more.