Lake: Senate Prepares to Ratify START Treaty

Eli Lake reports:

The Senate voted Tuesday to limit debate on the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), paving the way for final ratification of the arms-control pact as key Republicans defied their party leadership and announced support for the accord.

The move to invoke cloture passed by a 67-28 vote after several days of debate and unsuccessful Republican attempts to add amendments to the U.S.-Russia arms agreement.

The Senate could take a final vote to formally ratify the treaty as early as Wednesday.

Democrats need the votes of nine Republicans to reach a two-thirds majority of 67 to ratify the agreement, if all Democrats vote in favor.

Still, it appears the treaty will garner significantly fewer votes than past arms-control treaties that were approved by the Senate with large, bipartisan majorities of 90 votes for more.

“Today’s bipartisan vote clears a significant hurdle in the Senate,” said Sen. John Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of theSenate Foreign Relations Committee. “We are on the brink of writing the next chapter in the 40-year history of wrestling with the threat of nuclear weapons. We’ve spent months building toward this moment.”

If the treaty passes, it will be a victory for the White House in a year of political setbacks. President Obama has made passage of New START during the postelection lame-duck session of Congress a top priority, even though he also needed to negotiate a deal on the budget and tax-cut extensions.

Mr. Obama also made the treaty, which limits Russian and U.S.strategic nuclear arsenals to 1,550 warheads for each side, a central focus of U.S. efforts to reset relations with Russia.

Additionally, the White House has said the treaty is important for Mr. Obama’s program to curb the spread of nuclear arms as part of a plan to ultimately rid the world completely of nuclear weapons. Further arms talks are planned for limits on tactical or battlefield nuclear missiles, limits on the production of fissile material, and cooperation on missile defenses.

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Manchin Skipped Senate Votes For Christmas Party

Talking Points Memo reports:

After the Senate broke a GOP filibuster on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell earlier today, Sen. Joe Manchinreleased a statement saying he had concerns about the “timing” and “implementation” of a repeal.

But it seems he took even more issue with the timing of the vote itself, seeing as he skipped the vote altogether to attend a Christmas party.

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) told reporters at a press conference that Manchin said he had an out-of-town “family thing” and wouldn’t make the votes, according to the?Washington Post.

Manchin spokesman Sara Payne Scarbro elaborated to the Charleston Gazette in an email, saying that he and his wife “planned a holiday gathering over a year ago with all their children and grandchildren as they will not all be together on Christmas Day.”

“While he regrets missing the votes, it was a family obligation that he just could not break,” Scarbro said. “However, he has been clear on where he stands on the issues.”

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Court Delays Certifying Alaska Senate Race

The New York Times reports:

A federal judge in Alaska on Friday placed a conditional hold on the certification of the results of the contentious Senate race between Joe Miller and Senator Lisa Murkowski, telling the Miller campaign to take its legal challenges to state court.

It was not clear that the ruling would affect the outcome of the race. Ms. Murkowski, who lost the Republican primary to Mr. Miller this summer but returned to the race as a write-in candidate in September, declared victory on Wednesday, after state election workers finished counting write-in votes.

According to unofficial results, Ms. Murkowski defeated Mr. Miller by more than 10,300 votes.

However, Mr. Miller has challenged 8,159 of those votes. His campaign has said the state’s policy of counting misspelled votes or those with other imperfections violates a state law that says a write-in vote will be counted if it is written “as it appears” on the candidate’s declaration form. State officials, however, say Alaska’s legal precedent dictates that they count votes if they can determine a voter’s intent. The different views are at the center of Mr. Miller’s argument in court.

The judge in the federal case, Ralph R. Beistline of United States District Court, did not rule on whether misspelled votes should count, saying only that the Miller view was “very possible” and that the state’s was “viable.” He said that the issue was a state matter and that his stay applied only if the Miller campaign took its claim to state court. He reserved jurisdiction in case federal issues arose.

Even without the challenged ballots, Ms. Murkowski is ahead by about 2,000 votes. Her campaign said Friday that the ruling would not affect the outcome.

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Obama To Senate: Ratify Nuke Treaty

Politico reports:

President Obama told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Sunday that he’ll push the Senate in coming weeks to ratify a nuclear arms treaty the two leaders signed earlier this year.

“I reiterated my commitment to get the START treaty done during the lame duck session,” Obama said after meeting with Medvedev. “And I’ve communicated to Congress that it is a top priority.”

But the treaty, which Obama and Medvedev signed in April in Prague, has run into Republican opposition. Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), the minority whip, is leading a bloc of GOP senators who are withholding their support in exchange for concessions from Obama on modernizing the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Obama needs Republican support for the two-thirds Senate vote necessary to ratify the treaty, which would reduce the United States and Russia’s nuclear arsenals by about one-third

If Obama can’t get the treaty through the lame duck session, ratification would be left to a new Senate with fewer Democrats and more Republicans likely to oppose the treaty.

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