Kerry: December START vote critical

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) said it’s crucial to ratify the new START treaty during the lame-duck session and that failure to do so would harm America’s image abroad.

Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, made his arguments in a forceful speech on the Senate floor late Monday.

{mosads}It was the second part of a joint effort with the Obama administration to push for a vote on the 28-page treaty in the Senate. Earlier in the day, President Obama told reporters he intends to make the START treaty a priority in a Tuesday meeting with Democratic and Republican congressional leaders at the White House. Obama called the treaty “essential to our safety and security.”

Meanwhile, Kerry used his 35-minute floor speech to push back against GOP criticism that the treaty would erode the U.S.’s nuclear protections and is being rushed through the Senate. Countering critics point-by-point, Kerry said the treaty has already been repeatedly delayed and that an ongoing failure to ratify it is actually harming America more.
 
“With one simple vote before we leave here in the next days, we could approve the new START treaty and make America and the world more secure, and take an important step forward in leadership, as we express to the world our sense of responsibility with respect to nuclear weapons,” Kerry said. “That’s the opportunity we have.”
 
The senator dismissed demands by incoming freshmen GOP senators that they have a chance to vote on the treaty. Several GOP senators have sent a letter asking for that opportunity, but Kerry said only the 111th Congress has scrutinized the treaty in depth through testimonial and debate hearings as well as congressional trips overseas.

“The 111th Congress was steeped in this, deeply steeped in this,” he said. “No other Senate can now replicate the input that we had into these negotiations.”

But Republicans continue to resist the Democratic pressure.
 
On Sunday, Senate GOP whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), the treaty’s chief critic, told NBC’s “Meet The Press” there is “no chance” for a lame-duck vote on the treaty. However, Kyl acknowledged that if Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) would allow proper time for a full debate and amendment process, “theoretically there would be time.”
 
The White House needs nine GOP senators to back the treaty to win passage, assuming all of the chamber’s 58 Democrats support it. The Foreign Relations Committee’s ranking Republican, Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) is backing the deal, along with a host of national security officials from both Republican and Democratic administrations.
 
The treaty signed by Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last spring would reduce missiles, warheads and launchers in both countries, and would replace a previous agreement that expired in December.
 
Republicans, led by Kyl, have criticized the treaty based on fears that it endangers the U.S. by not taking strong enough steps to “modernize” the country’s existing arsenal of missiles.
 
On Sunday, Kyl said the treaty was not an urgent matter but a political one, and that there was simply no time for a full floor debate given looming debates over the Bush-era tax cuts, a defense authorization measure that includes a repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy and other legislation.
 
“[Reid] can bring the START treaty up any time he wants to, but he has a different agenda,” Kyl said. “My issue is that you can’t do everything. How can Harry Reid do all of the things we talked about and in addition to that deal with the START treaty?”
 
But Kerry suggested it was the Kyl-led Republicans who were playing politics, and endangering the U.S. by doing so.
 
“What happens when the president of the United States negotiates a treaty and comes back here and the rest of the world sees that treaty bogged down — not in the substance of the treaty, but in the politics of the day?” Kerry said.
 
Veering close to accusing Kyl of not negotiating in good faith, Kerry also said he has bent over backwards to accommodate GOP concerns about the treaty.

“We have dealt with each and every one of the concerns that were raised in good faith — and frankly, it’s important to have reciprocal good faith in the workings of the United States Senate,” Kerry said.