US Senator Lindsey Graham said that US President Donald Trump has called for a bill to tighten sanctions against Russia to be moved through Congress.
According to Graham, Trump made this request to Senate Republican Leader John Thune on Sunday, November 16, while he was playing golf. The senator also said that the White House notified him "about two hours ago" that the administration had approved the bill, which currently has the support of more than 80 senators, CNN reports.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune could not confirm that a bill to tighten sanctions against Russia could be passed before the end of the year.
“We'll see”, the influential lawmaker said laconically when asked at a press conference whether the bill would be approved before the end of 2025.
However, Thune advocated for the initiative to first pass the House of Representatives. “I think the more likely outcome is that it will pass the House. This is an initiative related to the revenues of the US federal budget. And the revenue initiatives come from the House of Representatives,” the senator said.
“If we had it in the Senate, we could do it here. But I also think that if we want to speed up the passage through Congress in order to quickly get the document to the president’s desk for signature, then the process would probably take less time if the bill came from the House of Representatives to us in the Senate so we could bring it in for consideration and work on it as a whole,“ Thune explained. “But the conversations about that are ongoing,“ he acknowledged.
The senator recalled that Trump had recently expressed support for the bill. "We want to make sure that we do everything we can to provide the administration with the tools it needs to facilitate and ensure a peaceful resolution of the Russia-Ukraine conflict," Tun said.
The bill in question was introduced in early April by Senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal. The initiative includes secondary sanctions against Russia's trading partners. The lawmakers' proposal included import tariffs of 500 percent on U.S. imports from countries that buy oil, gas, uranium and other goods from Russia.