Morning Bell: National Security Shouldn’t Be For Sale

Conn Carroll / November 16, 2010

The Washington Post reports this morning that the fate of a lame duck vote on New START rests on just one man: Senator Jon Kyl (R–AZ). According to the Post’s sources, other Republicans in Congress have “kind of delegated” New START to Kyl, meaning that if the Obama Administration wins his vote, the nine total Republican votes needed to reach 67 votes would be easy to find. That is why the White House dispatched General Kevin Chilton to Arizona last Friday, and it is why Defense Secretary Robert Gates is scheduled to meet with Kyl later this week.

In what the Post describes as a “high-octane lobbying” campaign, Gates has already offered Kyl an extra $4 billion in spending on nuclear programs in exchange for his vote. This is on top of the existing $10 billion Administration pledge. This deal is bad policy and deplorable politics.

First of all, the White House has no standing to make this offer. Most of the proposed spending is in the out years beyond President Obama’s term, and the White House does not pass budgets; Congress does. How can any conservative take a White House promise for future funding on faith before the 2012 budget has been written? Instead, the White House has demanded a vote in the lame duck—before even the 2011 budget is approved. Second, the Obama Administration is not drawing this $4 billion from their own domestic priorities; they are shifting it from other defense priorities. The bottom line is that this deal, even if followed through, would just weaken the military elsewhere. (more…)