Thomas Daschle: “the Senate today is being presented with an opportunity that is as rare as it is important. For the second time in less…”

“the Senate today is being presented with an opportunity that is as rare as it is important. For the second time in less than 3 weeks, the Senate is being asked to give its advice and consent on a major arms control treaty: the flank agreement to the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty. Late last month, the Senate had placed before it the Chemical Weapons Convention [CWC]. After much debate, the Senate resoundingly rebuffed several attempts by the treaty's opponents to scuttle it, and eventually passed CWC with the support of 74 Senators. Now many have questioned the length to which CWC opponents went in their efforts to kill or delay Senate consideration of this treaty. I share some of those concerns. However, in the end, when the Senate was finally allowed to take up the CWC treaty, I would argue that the ensuing floor debate on the CWC treaty represented the Senate at its best. Senators discussed honest disagreements on issues directly related to the CWC treaty, carefully weighed those discussions, and finally voted up or down on those issues and, ultimately, the treaty itself. In short, during the actual floor debate of the CWC treaty, we saw the Senate acting in a responsible and exemplary fashion. I am confident that if we had this same kind of debate on the CFE treaty, we would see the same result. In fact, the margin would probably be significantly greater for CFE than for CWC.”