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Republicans threaten to derail START

Key Senate Republicans are threatening to pull their support of the START nuclear arms treaty because they don’t like the way Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is handling the Senate floor schedule.

On the second full day of debate on the treaty, three Republicans — Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, Arizona Sen. John McCain and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham – accused Democrats of playing politics with the treaty by scheduling Saturday votes on repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy and the DREAM Act.

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Democrats and the White House, which has made it clear that START Treaty ratification is their first priority, need the support of two-thirds of the Senate to ratify the treaty. On a Wednesday to move to executive session, Democrats had exactly that number – 66 out of 98 votes – giving them almost no margin for error when it comes to a final vote.

It appears that Democrats could have lost at least two of those votes Friday afternoon, when both McCain and Graham railed against the timing of the debate by calling it purely partisan politics.

“I have not seen this degree and intensity of partisanship that I see today in the United States Senate,” said McCain on the Senate floor. “That’s why this START treaty deserves serious consideration and it deserves serious consideration by itself.”

While Graham says he hasn’t decided whether he’ll vote against it, he threatened that Democrats were in danger of losing his support.

“The talks are lines that if you were serious about foreign policy, we would focus on it in a serious way,” said Graham. “And the idea of having a debate on a major treaty regarding nuclear arms between now and Christmas and dealing with the 9/11 bill, the DREAM Act, repealing ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ with no amendments is inconsistent with that.”

Graham added that he told the White House that the more “cluttered up the floor,” the “less likely we’ll be able to use the remaining time productively…. If you think START is that important to the world, why would you do this other stuff too?”

However, McCain and Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl together denied rumors on the Senate floor that their support for START was tied to any other pending legislation in the lame-duck session.

“There was never any deal like that going on,” said Kyl. “This treaty stands or falls on its own merits.”

Corker has been generally supportive of the treaty, but he did not vote to move to executive session Wednesday like Graham and McCain. Nontheless, Corker warned reporters he’s seen a “real chilling effect on this treaty” since Reid’s announcement on “don’t ask” and DREAM – and Corker says he’s shared his concerns with Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Corker is now demanding that the DREAM Act and the “don’t ask” bill be pulled.

“I’m hoping that those will be taken down or else I don’t think the future of the START treaty over the next several days is going to be successful, based on what I’m watching,” said Corker.

Manu Raju contributed to this report.

President Barack Obama celebrated the spirit of compromise Friday as he signed a controversial $858 billion tax-cut and unemployment insurance extension into law – but warned that bipartisan comity could be fleeting.

The bill, the result of a deal Obama cut with Senate Republicans over the objections of many Democrats, was a major victory for a White House that spent much of the last two years battling a unified GOP on the stimulus and health care reform.

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"We are here with some good news for the American people this holiday season," Obama told about 150 people, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), gathered in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

Noticeably absent were Speaker-to-be John Boehner (R-Ohio), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who were all cut out of initial negotiations between Obama’s staff and McConnell.

The president – who is still pushing for legislation repealing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” ban on gays in the military and the ratification of a New START treaty by the Senate in the remain days of the lame duck session – hailed the new law as a “good deal” for taxpayers and called for the spirit of compromise to continue into 2011 when a much more conservative 112th Congress is sworn in.

“Now, candidly speaking, there are some elements of this legislation that I don’t like,” said Obama, who abandoned his demand that the cuts be applied only to families earning under $250,000 in the face of unified GOP opposition. “There are some elements that members of my party don’t like. There are some elements that Republicans here today don’t like. That’s the nature of compromise -– yielding on something each of us cares about to move forward on what all of us care about.”

Yet Obama said he foresaw times “over the next couple of years, in which the holiday spirit won’t be as abundant as it is today. Moreover, we’ve got to make some difficult choices ahead when it comes to tackling the deficit. In some ways, this was easier than some of the tougher choices we’re going to have to make next year. There will be times when we won’t agree, and we’ll have to work through those times together. But the fact is I don’t believe that either party has cornered the market on good ideas. And I want to draw on the best thinking from both sides.”

If the bill hadn’t passed, the tax bill for the average American tax payer would have risen by about $3,000, he noted.

Vice President Joe Biden, who negotiated key elements of the deal with McConnell on Obama’s behalf, introduced the president with a reference to his now-famous caught-by-the-mike quip about Obama’s passage of health reform being a “big f—-ing deal.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is a — I wasn’t going say, a big deal, but an important deal. I can no longer say ‘big deal.’ Thank god, my mother wasn’t around.”

The measure extends the Bush-era tax cuts for all Americans for two years while also extending unemployment benefits for 13 months. It also includes a one-year payroll tax cuts and other incentives to help working families, small businesses and college students. None of it is paid for, raising the hackles of fiscal conservatives, and it provides an estate tax break for wealthy property owners, a GOP-inserted provision that sparked a near-revolt by House liberals.

McConnell was one of five Republicans present at the bill signing ceremony, along with 19 Democrats and others, including Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, the Rev. Al Sharpton and outgoing National Economic Council Chairman Larry Summers.

The event was Obama's 29th public bill-signing ceremony, according to the Associated Press.

It was the first Obama bill-signing attended by McConnell.


Eric D. Schwerin
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