Missouri Republican Roy Blunt is one of 10 newly elected U.S. senators urging their future colleagues to wait to debate a new nuclear arms treaty with Russia.
The newly elected senators say no strategic arms reduction treaty with the Soviet Union or Russia has ever been ratified during a lame duck session of Congress.
President Barack Obama wants the Senate to act soon on the treaty. But Blunt and the other newly elected senators want that to wait until they take office in January.
Blunt currently is a congressman from southwest Missouri. He said during his Senate campaign that he believes the treaty should be rejected.
The treaty would reduce the maximum number of deployed nuclear warheads in each country by about one-third from the current ceiling.