Liberals Propose Fast-Tracking Treaties
By Cliff Kincaid
February 4, 2009
The liberal Brookings Institution has come up with a controversial way to get costly and unpopular treaties ratified by the U.S. Senate. Their answer is to bypass the constitutional requirement that treaties obtain two-thirds of the vote of the Senate before passage by redefining the treaties as statutes. Then, they would only need a bare majority for passage in both Houses of Congress, which just happen to be controlled by Democrats.
Such an approach (web site) would mean quicker and easier passage of controversial and expensive measures that, if debated as treaties in the Senate, might take too long and upset and alarm too many Americans.
By submitting a new global warming treaty as a statute, the Brookings scholars argue, the Congress can act more quickly on the measure.
They specifically cite a U.N. climate conference scheduled for December, "when the international community is scheduled to gather in Copenhagen, Denmark, to negotiate a replacement for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol." The new agreement that comes out of this, they suggest, should be a statute, not a treaty, even though the 1997 Kyoto Protocol was a treaty.
Brookings scholars William J. Antholis and Nigel Purvis say that the U.S. must quickly transform its domestic and international energy policy and come into line with international demands. "To reclaim global leadership, the United States must show the world proof that it has the political will to curb greenhouse gases," they say.
The "political will" would be a power grab by Obama and his liberal allies in Congress. Left unsaid is the fact that this is obviously a way to cut conservative Republican Senators out of the process and forge a bare majority of Senators in favor of controversial treaties.
They say that "...in consultation with Congress, the president would decide that future climate and energy agreements are to be approved by the United States by statute rather than as treaties." In other words, Obama would decide, after getting the approval of leading Democrats in Congress, that he won't submit the new U.N. climate treaty as a treaty. Instead, he would submit it as just a statute. This would obviously make passage much easier.
They argue that all of this can be accomplished under the rubric of a new "Climate Protection Authority" that Obama should adopt.
"Domestically, the president's public approval and congressional majorities may never be as high," they note, in an obvious reference to Obama's Democratic edge in both congressional bodies.
The implication is that Obama has to act now, bypassing Senate conservatives, especially Republicans, by implementing the "Climate Protection Authority" and then submitting "future climate and energy agreements" as statutes rather than as treaties.
It must be done now, rather than later, the Brookings scholars argue, because the prospect of "regulating greenhouse gases could fade if the economy continues to worsen."
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