.
Only 3 Republican Senators voted against Kerry nomination as Sec. of State: Cruz, Inhofe, and Cornyn.
3/11/15, "Senate Had Fair Warning of Obama’s End-Run on Iran Talks," Betsy McCaughey, IBD
"Congress is struggling to thwart President Obama’s attempt to strike a
nuclear deal with Iran on his own, in violation of the Constitution.
Lawmakers are taking unprecedented measures — the invitation to
Netanyahu, the Corker-Menendez bill and even a letter to Tehran — to
stop it.
None of this would be necessary if the Senate had done its job
instead of rubber-stamping John Kerry’s nomination as secretary of
state.
In January 2013, Kerry plainly warned Senate Foreign Relations
Committee members — the same people now leading the charge against the
Iran deal — that he intended to support Obama’s end run around the
Constitution because “they’ve got to consider some other ways of getting
things done.”
Sens. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., Robert Menendez, D-N.J., and John McCain,
R-Ariz. all heard Kerry’s statement firsthand, ignored it and voted for
him, offering effusive praise for their former Senate buddy. Now they’re
getting what they should have seen coming.
Too bad the Senate abdicated its duty. It has final say on
presidential appointments, but our senators would rather go along and
get along than make sure nominees will follow the Constitution. Have the
senators learned their lesson?
This month, the Senate is expected to vote on the nomination of
Loretta Lynch as the next attorney general — the nation’s top law
enforcement official. During a Judiciary Committee hearing in January,
Lynch indicated that she thought Obama’s executive actions to rewrite
immigration laws were “reasonable.”
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, calls her views “disqualifying” and says that
the Senate must either defend the rule of law or “confirm an attorney
general who has candidly admitted she will impose no limits on the
president whatsoever.” Ensuring that top government officials are
committed to the Constitution is a no-brainer.
That’s what Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, tried to do at Kerry’s
confirmation hearing. The Constitution requires that treaties be
ratified by a two-thirds vote of the Senate, something Obama foresees he
cannot get. Obama calls the possible deal with Iran an “agreement.”
Presidents have always made “agreements” without Senate approval, but none of the importance and duration of the Iran deal.
“To allege that this doesn’t have all of the marks of a treaty is an insult to everybody’s intelligence,” McCain says now.
But at the Kerry confirmation hearing, McCain was mum about the point.
Only Risch pressed Kerry, insisting that calling it an agreement, not
a treaty, amounted to an “end run around the Constitution” that
reflected a dangerous “ends justify the means” mentality. With masterful
obfuscation, Kerry said that maybe things could get done in “the
regular order” — constitutionally — but he wouldn’t guarantee it. “It
would depend.”
Fast-forward to Feb. 24, 2015, when Kerry returned to the Senate
Foreign Relations committee for a budget hearing. When Menendez and
Corker pressed him for information about the Iran negotiations, he
stonewalled.
“I’m not going to go into the details of where we are and what we’re doing.”
Worse, Kerry said that there should be no “formal approval process” by Congress.
“This is the president’s prerogative.”
Kerry threw the senators a few crumbs, conceding that though the
president can suspend sanctions against Iran, permanently removing them
would require a vote in Congress.
A vote, but not the two-thirds majority of the Senate that the
Constitution requires for treaty approval. This is why the Senate’s
effort at curbing the president — the Corker-Menendez bill — is a
shameful retreat.
The bill says that Obama must submit a final Iran arms deal to
Congress within 60 days for hearings and a vote, and bars the president
from suspending sanctions against Iran in the meantime. The bill puts
the burden on Congress to cobble together a veto-proof majority, not on
the president to win over two-thirds of senators. That’s not what the
founders intended.
The Senate failed to do its job during Kerry’s confirmation hearings,
and now the nation faces the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran. Senators
treat these hearings as media opportunities and quibble about getting
their 10 minutes on camera instead of asking tough questions. In fact,
they request that answers be kept short so as not to infringe their own
time.
It’s hardly the deliberative body the Framers envisioned to provide “advice and consent” on critical issues."
========================
1/29/13, "John Kerry confirmed as secretary of State," Human Events
"John Kerry on Tuesday was confirmed by a Senate vote of 94-3 to serve
as Secretary of State replacing Hillary Clinton who steps down after a
tumultuous four-year term that ended with the Benghazi debacle.
The only Senators to vote against their Democratic colleague from
Massachusetts were Republicans Sens. John Cornyn of Texas, James Inhofe
of Oklahoma and Ted Cruz of Texas.
Inhofe, who has not released a statement explaining why he voted
against Kerry’s confirmation, may have been irked at an indirect
reference Kerry made to the work of Inhofe and other far-right senators
to defeat the Law of the Sea and other controversial UN treaties....
The 69-year-old faced relatively easy questions from his colleagues
during his one-day hearing on issues dealing with Iran, Syria, climate
change and contentious UN treaties.
Tuesday morning, Kerry’s nomination was passed out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on a unanimous vote."
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