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Senate Ratifies START Treaty
By a vote of 71-26 this afternoon, the Senate ratified the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), exceeding the two-thirds majority required for passage.
The vote brings to an end a long, winding and at times hostile debate over the arms agreement, which enjoyed broad support among one-time GOP influence peddlers, but was held up for much of the lame-duck session by several Republican senators who raised a series of procedural and policy objections to the treaty.
Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl led the opposition, and at times appeared to have rounded up the 34 votes he would have needed to block START. Kyl made a name for himself in the GOP in 1999 when he shocked American and international diplomats and handily blocked President Clinton's Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
This time, his efforts fell well short.
The New START continues the reduction of U.S. and Russian strategic arms and extends verification protocols, which have lapsed in recent months.
Kyl rallied Republicans to oppose the treaty over a number of objections. He and other GOP Senators complain that START should be accompanied by measures to provide for the modernization of the country's nuclear weapons infrastructure; that it doesn't contain provisions for tactical nuclear weapons; and that it shouldn't be addressed by a lame duck Senate, when new (mostly Republican) members will be serving in the 112th Congress in a matter of days.
They also wanted to deny President Obama another in a series of unexpected lame-duck victories.
"When it's all going to be said and done, Harry Reid has eaten our lunch," said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Fox News Radio yesterday.
But over the course of the week -- facing pressure from a slew of Republican former diplomats, national security leaders, and Sen. Dick Lugar (R-IN) -- a slow, steady drip of GOP senators announced their commitment to supporting START. By Tuesday afternoon, Democrats had on-the-record commitments from more than the nine senators they needed to guarantee ratification.
Yesterday, with the support of 67 members -- enough to pass the treaty -- the Senate broke Kyl's filibuster, a clear sign that his efforts had failed.
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4 Comments so far
Show AllAMEN! It's a start. . . .
"The New START continues the reduction of U.S. and Russian strategic arms and extends verification protocols, which have lapsed in recent months."
My guess is that both the US and Russia have so many nuclear weapons, this treaty doesn't make either of us safer and the purpose of the treaty is to make political points while at the same time cleaning house of unneeded weapons. Is it a good thing? Yes, and I'm sure Obama and the Democrats will to use it for all it's political worth during the next election cycle. However, this treaty is a drop in the bucket compared to all the negative things Obama's done since in office.
This is actually a real accomplishment for Obama and the Wimpocrats. Of course they had already thrown $85 Billion of
money we cannot afford to waste on incredibly stupid funding to
rebuild the nuclear weapons labs at the same time we are supposedly getting rid of nuclear weapons.
On the other hand, as our Teabag Governor in New Jersey just
showed with cancelling the second pair of NJ to Manhattan Midtown tunnels planned for decades, funding can always be cut
in the future.
It is actually no surprise that these Bills have passed in the
lameduck Congress. They could have been passed all along by
either forcing REAL filibusters like Sen Bernie Sanders or
by reconciliation.
But the plutocrats have already gotten their multibillion dollar tax cuts, a stab in the back to Social Security funding, and Telecomm monopolies got the first break in the dam of net neutrality.
The START Treaty is genuine progress...
But the other cave-ins on taxes and net neutrality, Social Security could have easily been avoided by a real fight
calling the Republicans bluff.
There is NO WAY that if a real campaign was mounted by all
Democrats and Obama like Sander's filibuster, that Republicans would have wound up opposing middle-class tax cuts or unemployment benefits extension just before Christmas.
It's amazing that we've come to the point as a nation that we're actually surprised and exhilarated by the passage of a treaty that any SANE nation would have passed in a heartbeat and without all the stalling and stupidity.
If anything the tortuous passage of this bill should signal to the world - as if they shouldn't know already - that very bad things are afoot in this country.