SENATE COMMITTEE PUSHES BACK TWO NONPRO NOMINEE VOTES

Due to concerns by two Republican lawmakers regarding future nuclear weapons reductions, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday held off on voting on the nominations of Rose Gottemoeller to be Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security and Frank  Rose to be Assistant Secretary of State for Verification and Compliance. While 37 nominations cleared the committee yesterday, including Adam Scheinman to be Special Representative of the President for Nuclear Nonproliferation, Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and James Risch (R-Idaho) requested to put off votes on Gottemoeller, Rose and the nomination of Puneet Talwar to be Assistant Secretary of State for Political Military Affairs. 

 

Committee Chairman Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) said, “We cannot begin to move forward in some of these critical areas of arms control and national security and verification and compliance without having people in those positions. So I intend to put their names on the next business meeting and hopefully we will have a vote at that time to move them forward. But we will observe the request of our colleagues.” Rubio and Risch’s concern stems from a lack of a commitment from the Administration to only undertake further nuclear weapons reductions through the treaty process— In August the lawmakers sent a letter to the State Department stating, “It is imperative that any further cuts to the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal be completed only through a treaty subject to the advice and consent of the Senate.”