Political Quotes

“let me make what may be my concluding remarks. The Senator from Oregon, who will make a motion in just a moment, had two primary points. I would like to respond to both of them. The first is, he said we do not want to change our testing policy now. I know that is the thing that animates him most in this debate. I want to state to everybody here that there is no intention to do this. This amendment does not do it. It is the President who establishes a testing policy. There is not a word in this amendment that suggests that we ought to test, how we ought to test; nothing whatsoever. All we do in this amendment is to preserve existing law. So we are not going to change our policy by this law. We are going to preserve it. We are going to say that after September 30 the ability of the President to test, if he thinks it is necessary, would continue to exist until there is a CTBT. That will expire unless we extend his authority. There is one condition under which we would be allowed to test in the future, as the Senator from Nebraska has pointed out; that is, if another nation tests. That does not have anything to do with whether we ought to test unless we are trying to develop a new weapon, and nobody is suggesting that we would test for that reason.”