The House is not in session today.
In the Senate, courtesy of the Office of the Majority Leader:
Convenes: 12pm
Following any Leader remarks, the Senate will resume Executive Session to consider the New START Treaty.
There will then be 3 hours of debate with respect to the Risch amendment #4839 with the time divided as follows: one hour under the control of Senator Kerry or his designee and 2 hours under the control of Senator Risch or his designee. No amendments will be in order to the Risch amendment and upon the use or yielding back of time, the Senate will vote with respect to the amendment.
Therefore, at approximately 3:00pm, the Senate will proceed to up to 3 roll call votes in relation to the following:
- Risch amendment #4839 to the New START Treaty
- Confirmation of Executive Calendar #892, the nomination of Raymond J. Lohier, Jr., of New York, to be United States Circuit Judge for the Second Circuit
- Confirmation of Executive Calendar #1092, Carlton W. Reeves, of Mississippi, to be United States District Judge for the Southern District of Mississippi.
A Sunday session. Probably the first installment on a demonstration of the fact that the leadership is willing to keep the Senate working during every available last minute, if necessary. And no one is more dedicated to making every minute necessary than the Republicans, who intend to waste as many of them as possible.
I do notice, though, that there are two more judicial confirmations on the schedule today, making a total of 12 that have suddenly moved since Thursday. Thursday, by the way, was the day the Democratic Caucus met to start hashing out exactly what package of rules reforms they might want to bring to the floor on January 5th. How... interesting.
The bulk of the day will be spent on the START treaty, mostly trying to fend off amendments, which would effectively kill the treaty if passed since it means the document would have to be renegotiated with the Russians. If you thought renegotiating the text with the House was a chore, I'd have to guess doing it with the Russians would be considerably more challenging.
But the amendments the Republicans are offering to the treaty are apparently aimed at forcing just that. Yesterday's McCain amendment attempted to insert language linking offensive and defensive nuclear weapons, while Risch's links strategic and tactical weapons. But, well... duh. Yes, there are linkages. But this is a treaty about strategic weapons.
Besides, have a look at John Kerry's take on these amendments:
"All it does is to state a truism, a fact, a reality. There is a relationship between strategic offensive and defensive capabilities," said Kerry.
Kerry succeeded in characterizing the amendment as a "treaty killer," because any changes to the treaty or the preamble would require a new round of negotiations with the Russians.
"Make no mistake, this becomes a treaty killer," Kerry said. "Can we deal with this issue without it becoming a treaty killer? Yes. We've already dealt with it. It's in the resolution of ratification."
Kerry was referring to the Senate's resolution of ratification, which will be the subject of another debate after the treaty itself is considered. The resolution of ratification, which was primarily authored by Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), expresses the Senate's opinion on the meaning of the treaty, and can be amended without stopping the treaty from going into effect right away. It is legally binding but does not require the treaty to be renegotiated with Russia because it simply gives the Senate's views on the pact.
See? Process and procedure. Process and procedure.
And now, on a completely different point, there's also this...