Beware progressives who call themselves ”Constitutional scholars.” All that means is they’ve studied how to get around the Constitution. President Obama is no exception, but in this instance it seems he’s just blatantly ignoring the law. Jake Tapper reports, via Hot Air, that Obama’s decided to simply bypass the Senate when negotiating a disarmament treaty with Russia.
With the clock running out on a new US-Russian arms treaty before the previous Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, expires on December 5, a senior White House official said Sunday said that the difficulty of the task might mean temporarily bypassing the Senate’s constitutional role in ratifying treaties by enforcing certain aspects of a new deal on an executive levels and a “provisional basis” until the Senate ratifies the treaty.
“The most ideal situation would be to finish it in time that it could be submitted to the Senate so that it can be ratified,” said White House Coordinator for Weapons of Mass Destruction, Security and Arms Control Gary Samore. “If we’re not able to do that, we’ll have to look at arrangements to continue some of the inspection provisions, keep them enforced in a provisional basis, while the Senate considers the treaty.”
Samore said administration lawyers are exploring the “different options that are available. One option is that both sides could agree to continue the inspections by executive agreement; that would work on our side. On the Russian side, as I understand it, that would require Duma approval.”
The fact that the administration is preparing for such an extraordinary measure shows just how much pressure the two administrations are under to arrive at an agreement before the 18-year-old treaty expires.
Why would he bypass the Senate when it’s controlled by his own party? Is he afraid a public debate will reveal his plans to weaken the United States’ defense systems?
Recent Comments