Nuclear arms treaty clears key Senate hurdle

Washington (CNN) -- The new nuclear arms control pact with Russia cleared a key procedural hurdle Tuesday as the Senate voted to cut off debate on the measure.

The 67-28 vote indicated a near-certain win for President Barack Obama on one of his top foreign policy priorities as Democrats continued to push through a series of measures before the end of the lame-duck session of Congress.

Eleven Republicans joined a unified Democratic caucus in support of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, known as New START. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, said the measure will proceed to a final Senate vote no later than early Wednesday afternoon.

The treaty, if ratified, would resume inspections of each country's nuclear arsenal while limiting both the United States and Russia to 1,550 warheads and 700 launchers.

The treaty "leaves our country with enough nuclear warheads to blow any attacker to Kingdom Come," Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tennessee, declared on the Senate floor Tuesday. "I'm convinced that Americans are safer and more secure with the New START treaty than without it."

Alexander and several other Republicans broke with hard-line conservatives in arguing the accord does nothing to interfere with missile defense. They also said, contrary to the fears of many conservatives, that they had been assured of the administration's commitment to modernizing America's aging nuclear arsenal.

Alexander was joined in his support for the treaty by fellow GOP senators Richard Lugar of Indiana, Scott Brown of Massachusetts, Thad Cochran of Mississippi, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine, George Voinovich of Ohio, Bob Corker of Tennessee, Robert Bennett of Utah, and Johnny Isakson of Georgia.

If every senator votes the same way on final passage, the measure will receive enough support for congressional approval.

Under Senate rules, the treaty required a two-thirds majority of voting senators to pass, according to the office of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada.

Normally, that means the threshold for approval is 67 votes. At least one Democrat, Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, was initially believed to be unlikely to be present for the final vote due to surgery for prostate cancer -- dropping the total number of senators voting to 99 and, therefore, the threshold for approval to 66.

Kerry indicated Tuesday, however, that Wyden will be present for the final vote.

A burst of GOP support came one day after Senate Democrats, joined by some Republicans, defeated several proposed Republican amendments to the treaty.

The defeated amendments included adding a reference to tactical nuclear weapons and a bid to remove from the preamble language recognizing a relationship between offensive and defensive weapons.

After a closed Senate session discussing New START on Monday, Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, a leading proponent of the treaty, read reporters a letter to the Senate from Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen that expressed the full support of the military for quick ratification.

"This treaty has the full support of your uniformed military, and we all support its ratification," Kerry read from Mullen's letter.

Several conservative Republicans have insisted the treaty is insufficient. They were trying to delay final consideration of the treaty until January, when they will have a stronger minority in the Senate to give them more leverage.

Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Alabama, earlier in the week called the pact "deeply flawed" and "a dangerous step towards undermining our national security."

"I will not support subordinating U.S. national security to an untrustworthy partner and neither should the United States Senate," he said.

Obama and Democratic leaders have been pushing to get the agreement passed before their majority in the Senate diminishes in January. With legislators eager to get home for Christmas, the session is expected to end when the holiday recess begins later this week.

"I hope that my colleagues' vote is based not just on what they think about the treaty, but what they think about the process under which it's been done," said Arizona GOP Sen. Jon Kyl, echoing conservative complaints that Democratic leaders have rushed the debate over the treaty.

In a sign of the high stakes involved, Obama and other top administration officials, including Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, all have been talking to senators in recent days to seek support for the treaty.

Gibbs said Monday that Obama was available to answer questions about the pact in the runup to Tuesday's vote.

The conservative campaign against the treaty strengthened over the weekend when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said on CNN's "State of the Union" program that he opposes the START accord. Kyl also said Sunday he would oppose the treaty.

An overwhelming majority of Americans, however, support ratification of the treaty, according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released Tuesday. Seventy-three percent of people questioned in the national poll said the Senate should approve the accord, while 24% said senators should reject it.

Obama signed the measure with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in April.

CNN's Alan Silverleib, Tom Cohen, Dana Bash, Ted Barrett, and Lesa Jansen contributed to this report

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