Senate Committee to Vote on New START After Recess

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee plans to vote on a contentious arms treaty with Russia on Sept. 16. The panel chaired by Massachusetts Democrat John Kerry, published a notice online Friday that it had scheduled a business meeting on the first Thursday after the Senate returns from recess to consider the new strategic arms reduction treaty (Treaty Doc 111-5), known as New START.

Kerry and ranking member Richard G. Lugar, R-Ind., had hoped to hold a committee vote on the treaty before the August recess, but ended up pushing back the vote until this month after the minority demanded more time. In announcing his decision in early August, Kerry said he “chose to reschedule the vote to be responsive to the concerns of our members so that we can build bipartisan consensus around a treaty.”

But he also said at the time that “we have the votes to report the treaty out of committee now.”