A Look Ahead: Foreign Policy in the Upcoming Senate Session
54th Senate, Marokai Administration
This feature is designed to serve as a handy guide to bills affecting foreign policy, our military, the DoEA itself, etc, etc, etc, in the upcoming Senate session. It's largely factual.
The TRICARE Reform Act of 2013: SoIA Snowguy summed this legislation up quite well. Nobody thought much about military healthcare when our previous national healthcare system was implemented, and everyone just assumed that it was just lumped in with Medicare and Medicaid, so we're just going to pass an amendment and pretend like it's been there all along, which for most purposes it has.
Department Renaming Act: Senator Oakvale's legislation to rename the DoEA/SoEA (as well as the DoIA/SoIA) to Secretary of State, with other names (I prefer Secretary of Foreign Affairs, which Talleyrand brought up) being considered. Presently, debate focuses on the name for the DoIA. The idea behind this legislation is to make the names more interesting to possibly draw more applicants for the posts.
Presidential Succession Amendment: This would place the SoEA higher up in line for the Presidency, right behind the President where the PPT now sits. This is fundamentally good legislation - the PPT is essential to the workings of the Senate, and were they to leave the Senate to be acting President while there's a perfectly good SoEA who could do it, the odds of things getting done would drastically decrease. This would let the SoEA take over instead, which just makes much more sense.
Virgin Act: This act by Sen. X would incorporate the Virgin Islands as a state, making them Atlasia's 53rd. The rationale behind this legislation is questionable at best: the Virgin Islands are extremely small relative to all other Atlasian states, and it is not necessary to add them as another state to incorporate them. The Virgin Islands could be added as part of Puerto Rico to incorporate them without needing to create another state, spreading thinner our population and making the odds that Mr. Griffin will ever succeed in his Save Our States movement even slimmer. There is a clear solution to this problem, and it doesn't require going as far as Sen. X's bill.
Protocols I & II of the Geneva Conventions: These are common-sense housekeeping bills in the mold of the previous UNCLOS ratification. It's ratifying treaties that are already customary international law that we haven't ratified yet, but we really should ratify because come on y'all it's the Geneva Conventions.
Separation of Powers Amendment: Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. This would remove Senate oversight over all nominees, so if the Senate has severe and legitimate concerns about a nominee's ability to serve as the Senate had during the Griffin hearings, they would no longer be able to approve or reject the nominee. If a bad nominee is nominated who doesn't even show up, like Mr. King's hearings, that nominee would still be confirmed. The Senate needs to send these nominees through confirmation hearings in order to make sure they're actual quality nominees, simple as that.
SJoyce is The People's Senior Foreign Policy Analyst and a leading voice on foreign and Imperial politics. He served as Secretary of External Affairs in the Polnut and Napoleon administrations.
To be honest, I forget my rationale for that bill and just withdrew it
