The Obama administration, overly and openly eager to conclude the ratification of the New START agreement, is promising the Senate Republicans that it will always compromise its principles and even compromise with the devil (in this case, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), if that's what it takes, to get a legitimate and fully-endorsed arms control deal through the works.
The offer was for a boost of $4.1 billion in funding between 2012-2016 for the nuclear weapons complex that will go to maintaining and modernizing the arsenal and the laboratories that oversee that effort. Of that, $1 billion would cover a deficit in the pension fund for the agency in charge of the stockpile and laboratories.
The additional money comes on top of an additional $10 billion the administration had already agreed to over 10 years.
When will Charlie Brown learn? Even though the obstructionist Republicans clearly stated their demands for funding the nuclear weapons labs as their price for the treaty ratification, they're not going to let Obama get his treaty victory by the end of the year. Lucy, I mean Sen. Kyl, will just pull away from his previous statements and again repeat his inability to agree to a treaty in which, while endorsed by numerous right-wing conservatives and military general officers, he inherently doesn't believe. Because it's fun to watch Charlie Brown, I mean President Obama, fall on his back and moan. It's not like this is a new tactic that the Repubs have worked out.
In other news, the SecState and SecDef write this op-ed in the Washington Post telling us how important it is to pass this arms control treaty. They're not talking to the general public, they're speaking to the Repub politicians who think they can get away with lying about the details of what the treaty does and does not do.
