Thread: Reject New START in the Lame Duck Session

Reject New START in the Lame Duck Session

Salvaging the New START, the arms reduction treaty with Russia, is of such import to the Obama administration that they are pulling out all the stops in order to get it ratified.

Key Republicans are publicly voicing rather weak concerns that the New START has some as yet unresolved issues with little time to debate and discuss those issues. High ranking Democrats are chorusing passage of New START as necessary for “national security,â€

And more from CNS



Obama Administration Steps Up Push for ‘Lame Duck’ Ratification of Arms Control Deal
Monday, November 22, 2010
By Patrick Goodenough

START-Clinton

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, flanked by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), talks about the new START Treaty on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2010. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

(CNSNews.com) – Ramping up the campaign to get the Senate to ratify the New START arms reduction treaty during the lame duck session of Congress, President Obama devoted his weekly radio broadcast to the issue while Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pressed it home doing the rounds of the Sunday talk shows.

With a two-thirds vote needed for ratification, the administration needs at least eight Republican Senators to vote with all of the Democrats to succeed. If the matter rolls over to the next Congress, the required number rises to at least 14.

With time passing and the number of opposed or undecided Republican senators evidently climbing, Clinton was asked on both CBS’s Face the Nation and NBC’s Meet the Press whether the president was risking failure in nailing down a foreign policy priority so soon after being unable to finalize a free-trade deal with South Korea earlier this month.

After disputing that the two situations were analogous, Clinton reiterated the argument that arms reduction treaties with Moscow have historically enjoyed strong support from Democrats and Republicans.

In this case, she told CBS, New START had been voted out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by “a big bipartisan vote.â€