Wendy Sherman: “I expect to be the chair of the subcommittee of the Foreign Affairs Committee that deals with terrorism and…”

“I expect to be the chair of the subcommittee of the Foreign Affairs Committee that deals with terrorism and nonproliferation, and I want to focus on those matters in my short presentation here today. The most important issue facing the United States and certainly the most important part of this bill deals with preventing nuclear attack on American cities. Since a nuclear bomb is about the size of a person, it could be smuggled into the United States inside a bale of marijuana. Now, I know that this bill will deal with port security, but we cannot expect our ports or our borders to be airtight. The key is preventing the worst people from getting their hands on the worst weapons. This bill implements several provisions that will be helpful in that regard. First, it authorizes all funds necessary for the Nunn-Lugar program to help Russia get control over its thousands of potentially loose nukes, the weapons left over from the Cold War. Second, it authorizes all funds necessary for the Global Threat Reduction Initiative to get control of the 20 tons of highly enriched uranium at various nuclear reactor sites around the world, many of them unsecured.”