A group of US Senate Republicans wants to treat global climate accords as if they were formal treaties, a move that could make it difficult for a future president to rejoin the Paris agreement.
Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyoming) and 23 other Republicans on Wednesday introduced a bill that would require any international climate agreement to be considered a treaty under the US Constitution and therefore need a two-thirds majority in the Senate for the US to join. This would include any attempt to re-join the Paris agreement, which was designed to avoid the need for a Senate vote.
The bill also would prohibit the use of federal funds to support any agreement until it gets Senate ratification.
The proposal is squarely aimed at a potential future Democratic president who would want to re-join the Paris agreement, as former president Joe Biden did at the start of his term in office.
"Democrat administrations have a history of ignoring the will of the American people and bypassing Senate approval to unilaterally join costly international climate treaties," Barrasso said. "This will ensure the American people have the final say on where their tax dollars go."
Barrasso and his colleagues introduced the bill just a day after US president Donald Trump's second withdrawal from the Paris agreement formally took effect.
Trump also recently pulled out of dozens of organizations, including the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Senate-ratified treaty under which the Paris agreement was negotiated, although there are questions as to whether he can do that unilaterally.
While Republicans control the Senate with 53 seats, getting the bill through Congress could prove difficult, as it would likely need at least some Democratic support to get the 60 votes needed to bypass a filibuster in the Senate. The Republicans' slim majority in the House of Representatives would require them to prevent any of their members from voting against the bill.
