1NC START DA
A. UNIQUENESS -- WILL PASS – NOW KEY TO ENSURE GOP VOTES.
AP 6/11/10.
A key US Senate committee will vote on a landmark nuclear arms treaty with Russia
before lawmakers leave for their monthlong
August break, the panel's top two members said Thursday. "We plan to hold a vote in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the New START Treaty
prior to the August recess," said the panel's chairman, Democratic Senator John Kerry.
Kerry said he
and Senator Richard
Lugar, the committee's top Republican, "
are confident that our colleagues from both sides of the aisle will join us in supporting the treaty to strengthen our national security."
Approval by the panel would set the stage for action by the entire US Senate, where 67 votes are needed for ratification, a process US President Barack Obama has said he would like to see completed in 2010. Obama's Democratic allies and their two independent allies control only 59 votes, meaning the treaty's backers will need to rally at least eight Republicans to approve the pact. "
This timeline for committee consideration is imperative so that we can restart inspections, invigorate our relationship with Russia and continue our leadership in global nonproliferation," said Lugar. Lugar, widely hailed as a champion of efforts to curb the spread of nuclear weapons and materials, said the panel would address "legitimate and important concerns expressed by senators."
Some Republican senators have indicated they are inclined to back the pact but say they worry about the effects on the US nuclear deterrent and that they want to energize work at national nuclear laboratories to ensure the safety and reliability of the US arsenal.
B. LINK – RAPID WITHDRAW SAPS PC FOR AGENDA.
HERALD SUN 10. [“Leaving worthy issues on the table” April 27 -- lexis]
To avoid that trap, Obama had to govern with discipline. First, he would have to turn potential negatives into successes. At home, that meant not only engineering a stimulus program to end the recession but also designing financial reform to prevent a recurrence.
In Iraq and Afghanistan,
it meant charting a path to not just withdrawal but stable outcomes.
Since both fronts would take enormous energy and political capital, Obama could not afford to squander whatever remained across an array of worthy electives. So over time he subordinated everything to just two: health-insurance reform and blocking Iran's development of nuclear weapons.
PC KEY TO START PASSAGE.
Sharp, 8/28/09 (travis, military policy analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, where he specializes in defense budgeting, military policy, and congressional involvement in national security, http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/local-priorities-vs-national-interests-arms-control)
While beliefs about national sovereignty and international law
matter, when it comes to arms control treaties, ideological considerations rarely trump pork-barrel politics. Would a senator from a state dependent on the nuclear weapons complex oppose an arms control treaty not on the basis of ideology, but because the treaty would mean the loss of jobs or funding in their home state? Absolutely. As such, the Senate could become a stumbling block in President Barack
Obama's plans to reduce the U.S. nuclear arsenal and strategic triad of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and strategic bombers.
While past treaties such as START I and SORT were approved overwhelmingly by the Senate, those agreements didn't alter the triad's fundamental configuration.
Warheads and delivery vehicles were retired, but the constellation of bases and supporting defense contractors, though reduced, remained in place. The force posture being considered by the Obama administration, however,
challenges the long-standing status quo and therefore, threatens the local interests of many senators. With a two-thirds Senate majority of 67 votes needed for approval, treaties in the 111th Congress must not only attract support from all 60 caucusing Democratic senators, they must also win affirmation from at least seven Republicans. Based on the guidelines laid out by Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, the upcoming START follow-on shouldn't be hindered by the 67-vote threshold. But
what happens after
the next round of negotiations,
when warhead numbers will really begin to be lowered? Pushing deeper nuclear reductions through the Senate will be extraordinarily difficult and will require a Herculean political effort from the White House.
