Senator Bob Corker released the following statement on Friday on a resolution offered by the Obama administration at the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) regarding the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), which the Senate rejected in 1999.
He said, “In so many cases, the president has tried to circumvent Congress by retreating to international organizations and ‘executive agreements’ in an attempt to unilaterally make significant policy changes. Fortunately, it appears the administration has heeded the strong warnings so many of us articulated in a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing earlier this month and has changed course on the CTBT.
Any attempt to circumvent Congress by using a backdoor process to attempt to implement a treaty the Senate has voted to reject would have been wholly inappropriate and set a dangerous precedent, and I am pleased the engagement of the members of our committee in this issue has dissuaded additional executive branch overreach by this administration.”