5 Dec 2012 10:51 am
Senate Republicans Vote Down International Disabilities Treaty The U.S. Senate today (yesterday) killed the ratification of a United Nations treaty designed to improve the prospects of those with disabilities around the world by a vote of 61-38, ending the best chance of any significant treaty making its way through the lame duck session. All “no” votes came from Republicans and the measure fell just five votes short of achieving the two-thirds of the Senate approval required for passage. In voting down the Convention on the Rights of People with Disability, Senate Republicans have rejected a treaty based principally around the United States’ own Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which passed 91-6 in 1990. The major provisions of the treaty were modeled after ADA’s requirements of providing equal access to all citizens regardless of disability; it’s passage also would have given the United States a seat on a committee charged with aiding in implementation. [...] Opposition to new treaties has become endemic among Republicans. GOP obstruction also lead to the blocking of the Convention on the Law of the Sea during this session, despite the united support of business and military leaders behind it. The near failure also implies that the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, both opposed by the 2012 GOP Platform, won’t be moving forward anytime soon. Former Sen. Bob Dole (R-KS), also a previous Senate Majority Leader and 1996 candidate for President, was on the floor to lobby for Republican votes to help pass the treaty, but not even his presence, just days after being released from a brief stay in the hospital, was enough to save the vote. Instead, Republicans chose to stand with former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) in his castigation of the treaty’s provisions. In doing so, they’ve managed to prevent millions of parents around the world from being afforded the safe protection of their children with disabilities that Santorum enjoys and denied the United States the ability to prompt other states to live up to its standards.