Mike Levin: “we do accept the amendment on this side. There are no differences in terms of the North Korean threat. The question is…”

“we do accept the amendment on this side. There are no differences in terms of the North Korean threat. The question is whether or not we will be deploying a system which will be adequate to meet that threat. Right now we do not know. There has been no operational testing, realistic testing of our system. It needs testing. Although we have differences and have expressed those and argued over those differences as to whether we ought to be producing 10 more missiles which have not been tested operationally or realistically-- whether we ought to be buying these final 10 missiles given the fact we want to make sure if we are going to have a system that it works, and we don't know that yet--as far as this Senator is concerned, I very much disagreed with this approach of buying before we fly. Usually we fly and test before we buy, but this system, we have decided, at least the majority of Senators have decided, that we are going to buy before we test. I think that is a mistake, but that is not the issue on this amendment. This amendment would authorize $45 million, mainly for testing, mainly to improve the likelihood that a missile which has been deployed will in fact do the job. Since I have been one who has been arguing regularly for more testing, more realistic testing, more operational testing, it seems to me that I can very readily support funding which is going to go to more testing, which is really what this amendment is all about.…”