Why the Founders put the treaty provision in the Constitution
The front pages are full of the partisan back-and-forth over the Iran nuclear deal. The White House is claiming that the GOP is playing politics, as we see in this report:
Fox News correspondent Kevin Corke asked Earnest at the White House daily press briefing if it would be “instructive if not enlightening” for Rhodes, the president’s deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, to appear before Congress to discuss the Iran deal.
“Ben Rhodes is the person who told the truth about the Iran deal, and it’s Republicans who are either badly misinformed or outright lying about the Iran deal,” Earnest said in response.
The GOP believes that the White House did not explain the deal to the Congress – not an unreasonable conclusion, given how the Obama administration passed Obamacare, executive orders on immigration, and others.
It's not unreasonable to conclude that this is not a "Constitution friendly" administration.
Let's recall that the deal was rejected by the House and then did not make it to a vote in the U.S. Senate because of the 60-vote bar. So the U.S. and Iran made a deal without the usual participation of the Congress required by the U.S. Constitution.
It's easy to blame President Obama and the Democrats. I blame the GOP for lacking the backbone to stand up for the U.S. Constitution.
None of this partisan back-and-forth would be around today if we had voted for or against a treaty. My guess is that the Obama administration would have provided more information to get lukewarm votes on both sides.
In the end, a treaty would have passed or not passed. It would have been a better result than this mess that we have now.
Last but not least, that 60-vote bar needs to be reconsidered. It has become nothing more than a way for senators to avoid voting.
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