In a vote on Dec. 4, 2012, the Senate failed to reach the necessary two-thirds margin required to approve the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, a treaty modeled on the United States" Americans with Disabilities Act.

Negotiated under President George W. Bush and signed by Obama in July 2009, the convention was presented to the Senate on May 17, 2012. But 38 Republicans ultimately voted against ratification, despite the presence in the chamber of former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kan., still in a wheelchair following a recent hospital stay.

The final vote was 61-38. With 99 Senators present, ratification would have required 66 votes. Eight Republicans joined all Democrats in supporting the treaty, which has been signed by 155 nations and ratified by 126.

According to the Associated Press, the opposition involved concerns both substantive (claims of an erosion of U.S. sovereignty) and procedural (opposition to taking up a treaty during a lame-duck Congress).

"I do not support the cumbersome regulations and potentially overzealous international organizations with anti-American biases that infringe upon American society," said Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla.

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said the treaty could lead to the state, rather than parents, determining what was in the best interest of disabled children in such areas as home schooling, and that language in the treaty guaranteeing the disabled equal rights to reproductive health care could lead to abortions, the AP reported.

Meanwhile, 36 GOP senators had signed a letter in September in which they refused to vote for any treaty during the lame-duck session.

Even though Obama has signed the convention and forwarded it to the Senate, and even though his party unanimously supported it in the Senate, our rules do not allow us to call this a Promise Kept until the treaty is ratified. However, since treaties, unlike bills and other legislative measures, remain available to the Senate from one Congress to the next, it could be considered again, and when the new Congress convenes, the Democrats will see their caucus increase by two members. For now, though, we rate this a Promise Broken.