Joe Biden: “I urge my colleagues--on both sides of the aisle--to look closely at this bill and ask whether we should really be…”

“I urge my colleagues--on both sides of the aisle--to look closely at this bill and ask whether we should really be spending our time on it. Once they consider its implications we can reject cloture and get back to real work. What would it mean to make it U.S. policy ``to deploy as soon as is technologically possible an effective National Missile Defense system capable of defending the territory of the United States against limited ballistic missile attack (whether accidental, unauthorized, or deliberate)''? For starters, we would have to deploy a national missile defense even if broke the bank, the budget agreement, and the U.S. economy. And it might do just that, especially if the bill is interpreted as requiring defense of U.S. territories in addition to every square inch of the 50 states. This bill would also require deployment before we know the precise nature of the threat--indeed, before we are actually threatened by any strategic missiles other than Russia's and China's, which have posed that threat for years. That raises the distinct risk that we would deploy the wrong defense for the real threats we may someday face.”