Political Quotes

“My amendment is very simple. The United States should not be spending money to disarm ourselves--to dramatically cut our strategic nuclear deterrent under the New START Treaty--if the other party to the treaty is not trustworthy. At the moment, the Russian Federation is clearly not trustworthy. Let me remind us all of Russia's current record on observing treaties and agreements. In 1994, Russia, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and the United States signed the Budapest Memorandum. This agreement included a commitment to ``respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine.'' But this agreement did not keep Putin from invading Ukrainian territory. Strike one. In January, The New York Times revealed that the Russian Federation was cheating on another treaty--the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, or INF Treaty. According to the story, our State Department has been raising the INF cheating issue with the Russians for about a year now, with no response. Strike two. In 2007, President Putin announced that he was suspending Russian participation in the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, or CFE. This came after years of Russian violations of the CFE Treaty. Strike three. Is the Russian government trustworthy? The answer is clearly no. The question for us tonight under my amendment is whether it makes sense for us to spend money on reducing our nuclear deterrent when the other party to the New START Treaty is not trustworthy.…”