Natalie’s Commentary: Senator Ted Cruz is suggesting some ways that President Trump can protect against the Iran Nuclear Deal and the Paris Climate Accords being reinstated the next time a Democrat is in the White House. Senator Cruz is suggesting that President Trump follow the Constitution and submit both of these agreements to the Senate for ratification as treaties. This will prevent a future Democrat administration from reinstating these foreign agreements by fiat and will force following the Constitution!
Sen. Cruz Urges Trump to File Paris Climate and Iran Nuclear Agreements as Treaties
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) who is on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urged the Trump administration Tuesday to submit both the Iran Nuclear Deal and Paris Climate Agreement to the Senate as formal treaties in the hopes that a vote would stop from being restored.
In a letter to President Donald Trump, Cruz made the argument that the two deals should have been submitted as treaties to the Senate by the Obama administration, because Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 in the Constitution “grants the Senate a significant, unique, and indispensable role in developing American foreign policy through treaties.”
Cruz went on to write, “Multiple previous administrations, however, have undermined the Senate’s constitutional role by negotiating significant international agreements, and then refusing to submit them to the Senate for its advice and consent.”
“Most recently—and most egregiously—President Obama refused to submit either the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the Iran Deal) or the United Nations Paris Climate Agreement (the Paris Agreement) to the Senate as a treaty,” Cruz added.
The Paris Climate Accord is a legally binding agreement that was adopted by 196 countries in 2016 with the aim of limiting global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Trump addressed his disapproval of the methods outlined in the Paris Agreement at a 2017 White House press briefing saying, “Not only does this deal subject our citizens to harsh economic restrictions, but it also fails to live up to our environmental ideals.
“Further, while the current agreement effectively blocks the development of clean coal in America … China will be allowed to build hundreds of additional coal plants. So, we can’t build the plants, but they can, according to this agreement,” he added.
The Trump administration exited both the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris Accord during Trump’s first term. But former Vice President Joe Biden has said that he plans for a United States under his leadership to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord.
The second agreement that Cruz referred to is the Iran Nuclear Deal, which was reached in July 2015 between Iran and six countries, including the United States. The Trump administration exited the nuclear deal in 2018, with Trump and many conservatives saying it did not go far enough to limit Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons.
“It is clear to me that we cannot prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb under the decaying and rotten structure of the current agreement,” Trump said in May 2018.
In his letter, Cruz said that close to three dozen senators had urged the Obama administration in 2016 to submit the two agreements to the Senate but President Obama did not comply because he knew the deals would not be ratified with the required two-thirds vote.
“The only reason the Obama administration refused to submit these agreements to the Senate as treaties were that it knew that the agreements were deeply unpopular and doomed for defeat,” Cruz wrote.
The Texas lawmaker ended his letter by encouraging Trump to restore the Senate’s role in overlooking the two deals by making them into treaties, writing, “Only by so doing will the Senate be able to satisfy its constitutional role to provide advice and consent in the event any future administration attempts to revive these dangerous deals.”