New START clears vote threshold; Kyl won’t admit defeat
Everyone here on Capitol Hill is beginning to see the ratification of New START as increasingly inevitable — everyone, that is, except for Sen. Jon Kyl. As the Senate headed toward a vote to close debate on the treaty, more and more GOP senators came out in favor of the agreement, pushing the number of ...
Everyone here on Capitol Hill is beginning to see the ratification of New START as increasingly inevitable -- everyone, that is, except for Sen. Jon Kyl.
Everyone here on Capitol Hill is beginning to see the ratification of New START as increasingly inevitable — everyone, that is, except for Sen. Jon Kyl.
As the Senate headed toward a vote to close debate on the treaty, more and more GOP senators came out in favor of the agreement, pushing the number of Republicans supporting New START past the nine-vote threshold that would ensure the necessary two-thirds majority for ratification of the treaty in the final vote coming Thursday.
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) was the latest Republican to publicly declare his support.
"I will vote to ratify the New Start treaty between the United States and Russia because it leaves our country with enough nuclear warheads to blow any attacker to kingdom come, and because the president has committed to an $85 billion ten-year plan to make sure that those weapons work," he said on the Senate floor Tuesday morning. "I will vote for the treaty because it allows for inspection of Russian warheads and because our military leaders say it does nothing to interfere with the development of a missile defense system. I will vote for the treaty because the last six Republican secretaries of state support its ratification. In short, I’m convinced that Americans are safer and more secure with the New Start Treaty than without it."
GOP Sens. Johnny Isaakson (R-GA) and Bob Bennett (R-UT) also expressed their support for New START Tuesday and Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) was expected to follow suit this afternoon.
Add to those votes the support already expressed by Sens. Richard Lugar (R-IN), Susan Collins (R-ME), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Scott Brown (R-MA), and George Voinovoich (R-OH), and that’s enough votes to ratify START. All Senate Democrats are expected to vote in favor of the treaty.
The current fence-sitters include Sens. Thad Cochran (R-MS), Judd Gregg (R-NH), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Mark Kirk (R-IL), and John McCain (R-AZ), some or all of whom could ultimately vote yes.
Republican senators who are definitely voting no include Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), James Risch (R-ID), Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Jim DeMint (R-SC), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Kit Bond (R-MO), and Jon Kyl (R-AZ), who led a press conference Tuesday morning to declare that he was not giving up on his drive to push the consideration of the treaty until next year.
"I honestly don’t know what all of my colleagues are going to do," Kyl said. "We believe this process has not enabled us to consider this treaty in the serious way it should have been considered. I hope a lot of our colleagues would agree with that."
Graham, who was signaling he might vote for the treat only a week ago, was the most indignant senator in complaining about the process Democrats have used to move the treaty during the lame duck session of Congress.
He also railed against his own party for the way they have handled the treaty and acted throughout the lame duck session.
"I stand here very disappointed in the fact that our lead negotiator on the Republican side… basically is going to have his work product ignored and the treaty jammed through in the lame duck. How as Republicans we justify that I do not know," Graham said. "To Senator Kyl, I want to apologize to you for the way you’ve been treated by your colleagues."
Graham kept talking about Kyl’s offer to hold the debate over nine days in late January and early February, with an agreement to vote in early February. As far as the administration is concerned, that offer is no longer on the table.
DeMint continued to accuse the Democrats of waging a war against Christmas vacation, as he communicated what he saw as the "outrage" of "millions of Americans" over the Democrats’ actions.
"It’s clear with this treaty that [the administration is] trying to cram something down the throats of the American people under the cover of Christmas," DeMint said. "They’re not looking at politics right now, they’re celebrating their holy Christmas holiday, and the fact that we’re doing this under the cover of Christmas… is something to be outraged about."
Josh Rogin covers national security and foreign policy and writes the daily Web column The Cable. His column appears bi-weekly in the print edition of The Washington Post. He can be reached for comments or tips at josh.rogin@foreignpolicy.com.
Previously, Josh covered defense and foreign policy as a staff writer for Congressional Quarterly, writing extensively on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, U.S.-Asia relations, defense budgeting and appropriations, and the defense lobbying and contracting industries. Prior to that, he covered military modernization, cyber warfare, space, and missile defense for Federal Computer Week Magazine. He has also served as Pentagon Staff Reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily newspaper, in its Washington, D.C., bureau, where he reported on U.S.-Japan relations, Chinese military modernization, the North Korean nuclear crisis, and more.
A graduate of George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, Josh lived in Yokohama, Japan, and studied at Tokyo's Sophia University. He speaks conversational Japanese and has reported from the region. He has also worked at the House International Relations Committee, the Embassy of Japan, and the Brookings Institution.
Josh's reporting has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, C-Span, CBS, ABC, NPR, WTOP, and several other outlets. He was a 2008-2009 National Press Foundation's Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellow, 2009 military reporting fellow with the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and the 2011 recipient of the InterAction Award for Excellence in International Reporting. He hails from Philadelphia and lives in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @joshrogin
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