Jul
6
Who needs a Congress?
July 6, 2009 | 2 Comments
During the Bush administration, it was not unusual to hear constitutionally illiterate folks screaming about Bush’s ideas on the “unitary executive.” The term does not mean what those people thought it meant, but it didn’t stop them from acting as though Bush was gently preparing the way for an autocratic regime.
Enter Barack Obama, and suddenly we find ourselves governed by a president who does seem to think he shouldn’t be bothered by pesky little contirvances such as “checks and balances.”
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.”
As Captain Ed points out, Obama has a 60-seat Democrat majority, and it shouldn’t be difficult to get 6 more Republicans to sign onto a reasonable treaty. But the current administration doesn’t like all those petty constitutional annoyances designed to slow down the machinery of government, so they will overlook all those niceties like Senate approval of a treaty and keep on trucking.
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I love that the Russians can’t do it without Duma approval but the Administration thinks it can without Congress’s approval.