Mike Levin: “the legislation being discussed this afternoon would undermine a carefully designed program called the National Missile…”

“the legislation being discussed this afternoon would undermine a carefully designed program called the National Missile Defense Deployment Readiness Program, which is currently in place. That is why the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense do not support this bill and why they favor their current program that is in place. This bill would commit us to deploy a national defense system before development is completed, without considering the critical factors that should inform a deployment decision. There are a number of critical factors. What is the impact on arms reduction of such a commitment to deploy a system that could violate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty? There is nothing in the language of this bill that says it will be treaty compliant. Nothing in this bill says that the national missile defense system that it commits us to deploy will be compliant with the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. That is a treaty, a solemn agreement between us and Russia. If we threaten to break out of that treaty unilaterally, we threaten the security of this Nation because that treaty permits Russia to ratify the START II agreement and to negotiate a START III agreement, reducing the number of warheads that they have on their missiles and warheads that could also potentially proliferate around the world and threaten any number of places, including us.…”