Mike Levin: “It is always ideal to try to bring matters before the committee. The chairman knows I agree with him on that. Sometimes…”

“It is always ideal to try to bring matters before the committee. The chairman knows I agree with him on that. Sometimes it is not possible just it terms of the workload to do that. I don't think we can fault any member of the committee if and when that load is such that they have to present it to the floor because they were not able to get together in place all the material at the time of the committee hearings. The Senator from Rhode Island would be involved in the debate on many nuclear weapons systems even though those matters in some cases were brought to the attention of the committee. There are new formulations just because new thinking has been brought to bear since our committee hearings and markup on those subjects. But, in any event, I fully concur with the Senator from Virginia. If we can possibly work this out to fill in an omission in what the Ballistic Missile Defense Office should be doing, which is to develop these performance criteria which are measurable for this major system to have an operational test plan for this major weapons system, it seems to me if that can be worked out either over lunch or during the afternoon, I fully concur with the chairman that we ought to do that.”