Senator Gary Hart's Warning About New START Delay
Senator Gary Hart Warns That Delaying New START Treaty Could Mean Years Before the US Has Inspectors Back on the Ground in Russia
Washington D.C., 30 November 2010: Today former Senator Gary Hart (D-CO), who was a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and was heavily involved in numerous other arms control treaties, warned that if the New START treaty is not ratified before the end of 2010, it could mean years before the treaty is ratified.
Sen. Gary Hart said: “The President, Secretary of Defense, Adm. Mike Mullen and the vast consensus of national security experts all agree that the New START treaty needs to be ratified before the end of this year. If it is not ratified in this session, it has to go back to square one in the Senate. This could mean months, if not years, of delay.”
Sen. Gary Hart added: “We need our inspectors back inside Russian nuclear facilities, we need to reestablish stability between US and Russian nuclear forces and we need to move on to the issues of tactical nuclear weapons as soon as possible.”
Paragraph 2 of Rule XXX states in part that “all proceedings on treaties shall terminate with the Congress, and they shall be resumed at the commencement of the next Congress as if no proceedings had previously been had thereon.”
Thus, if the Foreign Relations Committee fails to report a treaty before the end of a Congress, the treaty remains before the committee during the next Congress. If the committee has reported a treaty, but the Senate has not completed floor consideration of it when the Congress ends, the treaty is recommitted to the committee, and the committee must report it again before the Senate may consider it on the floor (Source: Congressional Research Service; Senate Consideration of Treaties, By: Betsy Palmer, Analyst on Congress and the Legislative Process, September 15, 2009).
