Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Senate Leader Deals Blow to President on Arms Treaty

Another of Obama's misguided signature priorities appears to be in deep doo doo.
President Obama’s hopes of ratifying a new arms control treaty with Russia this year appeared to unravel on Tuesday as a Senate Republican leader moved to block a vote in what could be a devastating blow to the president’s most tangible foreign policy achievement.

Mr. Obama had declared ratification of the New Start treaty his “top priority” in foreign affairs for the lame-duck session of Congress that opened this week. But the chances of winning the two-thirds vote required for passage of the treaty appeared to collapse with the announcement by Jon Kyl of Arizona, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate and the party’s point man on the issue, that the Senate should not vote on it this year.

“When Majority Leader Harry Reid asked me if I thought the treaty could be considered in the lame-duck session, I replied I did not think so given the combination of other work Congress must do and the complex and unresolved issues related to Start and modernization,” Mr. Kyl said in a statement. The senator added that he would continue to negotiate with administration officials for a possible vote next year.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I think it's absolutely despicable that those who have loudly made national security a main pillar of their purpose for being elected to office since i can remember, actually have subjugated our security to their now much greater purpose of undermining our president. If you think it's more important to make your leader look foolish because you didn't vote for him than it is to have a sound nuclear arms treaty with other nuclear powers, you should not be in office or, indeed, even call yourself and American. Shame on Mr. Kyle and all the Republicans!

Susan said...

The president did his job Republicans fail to do anything for this country...

traderrob said...

The START treaty is a boondoggle. Read up on it and you'll see.