US President Barack Obama's Republican foes laid out a year-end strategy on Wednesday that could doom efforts to approve a nuclear pact with Russia and lift a ban on gays serving openly in the military. All 42 Senate Republicans signed a letter to Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid vowing to block all bills until disputes over extending tax cuts due to expire January 1 and funding the government are resolved.
"While there are other items that might ultimately be worthy of the Senate's attention, we cannot agree to prioritise any matters above the critical issues of funding the government and preventing a job-killing tax hike," they said. Democrats control 58 seats in the 100-seat chamber, and would need to win over two Republicans to overrun any delaying tactics - and even then, they would face damaging delays while the legislative clock ticks down.
While Democrats and the White House are wed to acting on the tax cuts and government spending, the Republican vow to obstruct everything until those issues are addressed severely threatens the rest of their agenda. Reid fired back that Republicans were pursuing a two-year-old "obstruct and delay" strategy in response to Obama's agenda and said the opposition was content to "blame others for the problems they refuse to solve." Under Senate rules, Democrats do not need Republican help to move ahead with the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russia - but the landmark nuclear arms control pact could still be a casualty because they would need nine Republicans to get the 67 votes needed for ratification.
Ongoing talks with the White House have yet to win over Senate Republican number-two Jon Kyl, the party's point-man on the agreement, and it is unclear how many rank-and-file would defy him. "He is standing by his position that there is not enough time this year to take up the treaty, but talks are ongoing," said Kyl spokesman Ryan Patmintra.
Obama was to pursue his increasingly aggressive campaign to pressure lawmakers in a public appearance with retired US general and former US secretary of state Colin Powell, who strongly backs the accord. With time running short in the year-end "lame-duck" session, the Republican move could also stymie a Democratic push to lift the 1993 ban on gays serving openly in the US military, an unpopular policy dubbed "don't ask, don't tell."
As with START, the White House and Democratic supporters of ending the restriction enjoy strong backing from senior US military officers and face a far steeper climb when more Republicans enter Congress in January. Another potentially troubled Democratic priority is legislation, the DREAM Act, to overhaul US immigration rules to give some undocumented minors legal status if they serve in the US military or attend a US college.
Even as Republicans flexed their political muscle, fired up after November 2 elections in which they retook the House of Representatives and sliced deep into the Democratic Senate majority, talks were ongoing to end the tax feud. At issue were massive tax cuts passed in 2001 and 2003 with a built-in expiration date of January 1, 2011.
Republicans have called for extending all of the cuts, while Democrats have pushed for making permanent cuts that benefit chiefly middle-class Americans while opposing doing the same for the richest three-percent. US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and White House budget chief Jack Lew met with four top lawmakers handpicked to represent both parties in both chambers to map a way through the political mine-field.
Ahead of the meeting, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs signalled on ABC television that Obama might accept a compromise under which all of the tax cuts could be extended temporarily. Top Republicans like Kyl have called for a two-year extension of all of the cuts, raising the prospects that the two sides could come together, though they would still need to resolve a feud over government spending.