During consideration of the bill to repeal the authorizations for the use of military force against Iraq (S. 316), Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) introduced an amendment that would require any convention or agreement about pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response reached by either the World Health Assembly or the International Negotiating Body of the World Health Organization (WHO) to be deemed as “a treaty that is subject to the requirements of article II, section 2, clause 2 of the Constitution of the United States,” according to the text of the amendment.
The Senate rejected Johnson’s amendment on March 28, 2023 by a vote of 47 to 49 (Roll Call 71). We have assigned pluses to the yeas because in recent decades both the Executive Branch and Congress have regularly skirted the constitutional requirement in Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution that treaties have to be made with the “Advice and Consent of the Senate … provided two thirds of the Senators present concur.” Instead of recognizing agreements as treaties, they unconstitutionally designate them as “executive agreements,” thereby enabling the president and Congress to avoid seeking the advice and consent of the Senate and pass them by a simple majority of the House and Senate, rather than the more rigorous threshold of two-thirds of the senators present.
