Sen. Kyl Makes it Hard for Obama to Pass START Treaty
Sen. Kyl said the Senate should not consider the pact during the lame-duck session of Congress. President Obama has called passage of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) his top foreign policy priority during the lame-duck session that began this week.
The Americano
President Barack Obama has been looking for a badly needed political victory since he was trounced in the mid-tem elections. He hoped to get one or two on his 10-day foreign trip around the world, and was rebuffed by his own allies.
Tuesday, one of his two remaining possible political wins – approval by the Senate of a nuclear treaty with Russia before the end of the year – probably was snatched away by Sen. John Kyl (R.- Ariz.). The Associated Press said Democrats are unlikely to be able to move forward on the issue without his support.
Now the president’s only hope to say “we won one” depends on whether Democrats and Republicans can put together a compromise agreement on the Bush tax cuts due to expire at the end of the year. That is only partially in hands. Much depends on whether liberal Democrats in Congress can put together a proposal acceptable to an emboldened Republican Party.
A decision on any agreement on a permanent or extended agreement on the Bush tax cuts and whether they will apply to all tax payers or only to whose family earns less than $250,000 a year, probably will not come until after Obama meets with leaders of both parties at the White House. The meeting originally scheduled for Thursday was postponed until November 30.
On Tuesday it was about the nuclear treaty with Russia and how Sen. Kyl said the Senate should not consider the pact during the lame-duck session of Congress. President Obama has called passage of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) his top foreign policy priority during the lame-duck session that began this week.
Treaties need 67 votes to pass. In the lame-duck session, the administration would have to win over at least nine Republicans; if the treaty is put off until next year, that number would grow to 14.
The Obama administration knows just how important Kyl, the GOP’s leading voice on the treaty, is to getting it approved. That is why since last week they have been trying to woo him with a $4.1 billion
increase in the budget for nuclear modernization.
Two other important Republican voices on foreign policy issues – Sen. John McCain, of Arizona, and Sen. Lindsey O. Graham, of South Carolina – said this week that they were willing to support the treaty if Sen. Kyl approved it.
“The sense is, Kyl’s just not going to agree to something that isn’t going to meet the tests of the right,” said Norm Ornstein, a scholar of Congress at the American Enterprise Institute.
In its story The Hill explained that Kyl issued a statement saying he had told Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) that the treaty should not move forward before the end of the year.
Reid, President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.) had all been pushing for a December vote. Several former Republican officials such as Henry Kissinger and George Schultz also urged approval of the START treaty. Sen. Richard Lugar (R – Ind.), the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also supported the treaty.
Kyl’s stance is a major obstacle to ratification, since he can influence scores of GOP votes.
In his statement Kyl said he told Reid a vote should not be held “given the combination of other work Congress must do and the complex and unresolved issues related to START and modernization.
“I appreciate the recent effort by the Administration to address some of the issues that we have raised and I look forward to continuing to work with Senator Kerry, DOD, and DOE officials.” ?
Republicans, led by Kyl, have criticized the treaty based on fears that it endangers the United States by not taking strong enough steps to “modernize” the country’s existing arsenal of missiles. Apparently, the promise the administration made to Kyl last Friday that it would spend more than $4 billion on modernizing America’s nuclear arsenal was not enough to convince him to back the treaty in the lame-duck session of Congress.
TheAmericano/Agencies
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