The emerging strategy………U.S. Climate Treaty

October 22, 2009 By Save America

Obama may now have plans to bypass the constitutional requirements to pass the US Climate Treaty without majority Senate approval. A former Clinton State Department official, Nigel Purvis laid out the detailed blue-print for passing climate-treaties without the Senate’s involvement in a paper recently released called, “Paving the Way for U.S. Climate Leadership: The Case for Executive Agreements and Climate Protection Authority”. An abstract from this document reads:

“The United States should classify new international agreements to protect the earth’s climate system as executive agreements rather than treaties. Unlike treaties, which require the advice and consent of two-thirds of the Senate, Executive Agreements are entered into either solely by the President based on previously delegated constitutional, treaty, or statutory authorities, or by the President and Congress together pursuant to a new statute. The President and Congress should handle the most significant climate change agreements as congressional-executive agreements, which require approval by a simple majority of both houses of Congress. Handling climate agreements as congressional-executive orders would speed the development of a genuinely bipartisan U.S. Climate Change foreign policy, improve coordination between the executive and legislative branches, strengthen the hand of U.S. climate negotiators to bring home good agreements, increase the prospects for U.S. participation in those agreements, protect U.S. competitiveness, and spur international climate action. More specifically, Congress should enact “Climate Protection Authority”, which would define U.S. negotiating objectives in a statute and require the President to submit concluded congressional-executive agreements to Congress for final approval. This approach should apply both to the new global climate change agreement being negotiated in the United Nations by the United States and for the rest of the international community and to other future arrangements with a smaller number of emitting nations.”

Further, Mr. Purvis concludes the United States should classify new international treaties to protect the climate system as executive agreements rather than treaties, executive agreements being “complete and equally valid substitutes for virtually all treaties”. He also goes on to say, “the courts would be highly likely to uphold the agreement”, now that’s a real surprise…… for more go here: link to www.rff.org

Obama will likely be tempted to avoid the Constitutional constraint which requires a two-third Senate approval, by incorporating the Congressional-Executive Agreement. While campaigning Obama promised to re-engage and work constructively within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. So, will he actually pass this new Kyoto climate accord by sidestepping the Constitutional requirement of the 2/3’s Senate approval?

America needs to maintain its sovereignty and autonomy. It is what the majority of Americans demand. However, this is just another step in the global governance movement well under way in the Obama transition.

Here is “The Plan”:

“Kyoto as Congressional-Executive Agreement Obama aide Grumet’s comments combined with private remarks by Democratic Senate aides indicate that the Obama camp is considering a plan advocated by former Clinton State Department official Nigel Purvis. It is in a paper for Resources for the Future, a center-left think tank, titled “Paving the Way for U.S. Climate Leadership: The Case for Executive Agreements and Climate Protection Authority”. It explores “whether some international agreements are inherently treaties under the Constitution, or whether the President and Congress have discretion to treat an international agreement as a congressional-executive agreement instead of a treaty”. The author concludes, “The United States should classify new international treaties to protect the Earth’s Climate system as executive agreements rather than treaties”, executive agreements being, “complete and equally valid substitutes for virtually all treaties”. He assures us that “the courts would be highly likely to uphold the agreement,” despite the obvious purpose of circumventing longstanding Senate opposition to the agreement in its original treaty form. He dismisses the mere “historical tendenc(y)” of pursing the treaty form, though offers no precedent – or “historical tendency” – of simply reclassifying a failed regime as executive agreement to circumvent Senate opposition.

If the Obama administration does pursue the recommended path toward a congressional-executive agreement in lieu of a treaty for a successor to Kyoto, it does not seems that this is to impact the international debate, as is the stated intention, so much as it is to tweak the domestic landscape significantly altering Congress’ role as a way to commit the U.S. to the existing template for framework envisioned for Kyoto II.”

To read in its entirety go here: http://www.fed-soc.org/doclib/20090216_HornerEngage101.pdf

Again we ask Mr. President, where is the transparency you promised the American people? Along with all of these…………….lies.