It’s in the Constitution. You can’t ratify a treaty without the consent of two-thirds of the Senate. Presently, that means that you need 67 votes. It also means that you can’t have more than 33 senators opposed to ratification. They had a vote in the Senate today on something called the motion to proceed. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wanted to begin debate on a treaty called the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It’s basically an international treaty that recognizes the rights of disabled people and it is based in large part on the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.
You would hope that we could at least debate ratifying a treaty like this, and it turned out that we could. The Senate requires 60 votes to pass the motion to proceed and Harry Reid got 61 votes. The problem is that 36 senators voted against even having a debate about the merits of ratifying the bill, and that is three more than opponents will need to defeat it.
Some Republican say they oppose ratifying treaties during a lameduck session of Congress, but that makes little sense because the Democratic majority will be stronger next year. Some Republicans say they are opposed because they don’t want to surrender our sovereignty to the United Nations, but the treaty wouldn’t surrender any U.S. sovereignty.
The Republicans voted overwhelmingly to invade Iraq and create tens of thousands of disabled Americans as a result. And it turns out that they don’t like disabled people any better than gays, blacks, Latinos, or single women in law school who use contraception.
Bravo.