6. Department of State · Notable
Withdraw treaties pending before the Senate for 20 years or more
Printed page 175 6. Department of State
“The next Administration should also move to withdraw from treaties that have been under Senate consideration for 20 years or more, with the understanding that those treaties are unlikely to be ratified.”
What has happened
- Not started
Searched; no treaty has been withdrawn from the Senate. The instrument would be a presidential message asking the Senate to return pending treaties, which appears in the Senate's treaty record; congress.gov's treaty API shows 785 treaty documents of which none has been updated since 2025-01-15, so nothing pending — including the long-stale instruments the Quote has in mind, such as Treaty Doc. 96-53 (Law of the Sea-era) and the 1980s tax and extradition treaties still on the Executive Calendar — has been returned, withdrawn or acted on. The one Treaty Document of the 119th Congress, 119-1, was transmitted on 2025-01-14, before the window.
No action found yet. This entry is the starting point, not a finding.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
- Treaty negative search, run against the record Congress keeps of treaties: congress.gov’s treaty data, sorted by most recent update, holds 785 treaty records, and not one has been updated since 2025-01-15. The only Treaty Document of the 119th Congress is 119-1 (Mutual Legal Assistance), transmitted 2025-01-14 by the previous administration. So inside the window no treaty was transmitted, re-transmitted, withdrawn from the Senate, returned to the President, or acted on. A search for “treaty”, “treaties” and “international agreement” across the Federal Register, White House presidential actions, public laws and bills in Congress returns only the January 2026 withdrawal memorandum, Delegation of Authority No. 620, and unrelated fisheries and tax matters.
- Note on the treaty data: congress.gov pages refuse automated reading, so the treaty result is recorded as a negative search in the note rather than attached as an Evidence URL.
- Related: #475 (the other half of the Mandate’s treaty-housekeeping pair).
- Action
- withdraw
- Object
- Treaties pending Senate consideration for 20+ years
- ID
- 474