Senate OKs START deal

The White House scores another major lame-duck victory. | CNN screengrab By: Scott Wong and Shira Toeplitz December 22, 2010 03:16 PM EST

The Senate voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to ratify the START arms-control agreement, delivering a final victory to the White House at the finish line of the lame-duck session. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) overcame fierce opposition from the Senate’s top two Republicans, rounding up the necessary two-thirds support for the U.S.-Russia nuclear-arms pact. The final vote was 71-26, with 13 Republicans bucking their party and backing the treaty. Three senators didn’t vote. Bipartisan ratification of the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty marked the last in a string of major victories for Obama and congressional Democrats in a post-election session that most observers expected to be bogged down by partisan gridlock. Capitol Hill observers said the $850 billion tax compromise Obama brokered with Republicans earlier this month cleared the way for other items to advance. “This is an incredibly productive lame duck session,” said Jim Kessler, vice president of policy think tank Third Way and a former aide to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). “The tax deal changed the tone in Washington. Once the tax deal got done, it opened the flood gates and allowed for other things to occur. [It] allowed legislators to exhale.” The Senate voted on START the same day Obama signed legislation that begins a process to repeal the Pentagon’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” ban on openly gay service members and hours after it passed a stripped-down defense authorization bill. On Tuesday, the 111th Congress sent the president a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s food-regulatory system. Congress was expected to adjourn for the holidays later Wednesday after tackling a bill that would provide health care benefits for ground zero workers. “This duck was not lame. It was healthy, it was walking, it was actually running at different times,” Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) told POLITICO after attending the signing ceremony of the “don’t ask” repeal bill, of which he was a leading sponsor. But Obama was forced to compromise on a signature economic issue, caving to Republicans’ insistence that Bush-era tax cuts be temporarily extended for all Americans in exchange for an extension of benefits for the unemployed. Democrats had wanted tax cuts to end for upper income brackets. And the GOP scored victories by shooting down an immigration bill known as the DREAM Act and forcing Democrats to dump a $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill in exchange for a three-month spending resolution to avoid a government shutdown. A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey out Wednesday revealed that 56 percent of Americans approve of the way Obama handled the issues that Congress took up during the lame duck. Only 41 percent said they disapprove. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Wednesday the chance to reach bipartisan agreements on landmark legislation is what "animated" Obama to run for president and guided his actions in the lame-duck session. "What they show the president is that when people get together and understand and believe what is in the best interest of the American people — certainty in tax rates, repeal of policies that people believe are unjust, or something that protects our national security — that we have far more in common than we do in opposition," Gibbs said, "and that working together we can get things done." Even though Republicans helped push START ratification over the top, the bipartisanship was short-lived. Democrats blasted GOP leaders, accusing them of obstructing much of the lame-duck agenda. “Any time Congress is able to boost middle-class families and protect our national security like we did this session, we Democrats call it a success. ...” said Reid spokesman Rodell Mollineau. "Republicans are previewing an arrogant, reckless agenda for 2011 that is more focused on playing political games than common-sense problem-solving.” Privately, Republicans pointed to a Gallup Poll this month showing that public approval of the Democratic-controlled Congress had sunk to a historic low of just 13 percent. But publicly, Republicans would not say whether the lame duck session was successful. “It was wonderful that we kept taxes down for all people in this country and we really showed how serious we are about this kind of thing," John Barrasso of Wyoming, vice chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, told POLITICO. “It was certainly unusual based on the elections in November,” Barrasso said, adding that “I’m not sure this is what the Founding Fathers intended.” The START agreement, signed earlier this year by Obama and Russian President Dimitri Medvedev, was seen as the White House’s last political priority of the lame duck. Proponents argued the agreement would improve relations with Russia and curb the spread of nuclear weapons, because it requires the nations to resume on-site inspections and cut their nuclear stockpiles in the next seven years. But the top two Senate Republicans — Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Minority Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona — argued the treaty could make the U.S. less secure because of weak verification procedures and undermine U.S. missile defense. Republicans offered a series of amendments to the treaty over the course of the nearly week-long debate, but Democrats rejected all of the proposed changes. If any of those amendments to the treaty or preamble passed, the Obama administration would have had to re-open negotiations with Russia. Moments before the vote, Kyl called the Senate a "rubber stamp" for the president and dismissed the treaty as a Cold War relic. "This may be the last arms-control agreement for a while and maybe we can get back to focusing on the real issues, issues of proliferation, or terrorism, dealing with threats from countries like North Korea and Iran," Kyl said on the Senate floor. "It is nice to have another Cold War-era type of [deal] with Russia, but I suggest we move away from the distraction of agreements like this." Their opposition, however, failed to derail growing GOP support for the treaty, which received strong endorsements from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The pivotal turning point came Tuesday, when the No. 3 Republican, Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, broke ranks and announced he would back the agreement. Within a matter of hours, 11 Republicans had joined Democrats in a 67-28 procedural vote to end debate and move toward final passage, all but ensuring the treaty would reach the two-thirds threshold needed for ratification. In Wednesday’s ratification vote, 13 Republicans supported the treaty: Alexander, Bob Bennett of Utah, Mike Johanns of Nebraska, Dick Lugar of Indiana, Scott Brown of Massachusetts, Bob Corker of Tennessee, Johnny Isakson of Georgia, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Thad Cochran of Mississippi, Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, George Voinovich of Ohio, and Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, both of Maine. Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.), who shepherded the treaty through the Senate, struck an optimistic tone Wednesday that the treaty would be a solid step towards a safer nuclear world. "We can build on this treaty in a way that we share in the future strategies, analyses, and perhaps even technologies in the long run that will make all of us safer and ultimately provide all of us with the ability to deal with the realities of a nuclear world," said Kerry. "Our goal is to make us safer, and we believe this helps us do that."

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