Political Quotes

“it has been 16 years since the United States Congress last enacted re-authorizing legislation governing our controls on the export of dual-use technology, those items suited for both civilian and military uses. For much of the past 7 years, the President has been forced to exercise emergency powers to maintain dual-use export controls following the expiration of the 1979 Export Administration Act. This temporary exercise of authority has limited the penalties the Federal Government can enforce on export control violators and has opened up existing export controls to a series of legal challenges. It is high time, therefore, that the Senate act on S. 149, a bill to re-authorize the Export Administration Act. I look forward to the passage of this bill and the creation of a modern system of export controls. We owe this to U.S. companies, which deserve a rational and predictable framework of export controls. We owe this to our friends and allies, who look to the U.S. export control system as a model in devising their own systems. And, most importantly, we owe this to our national security, we cannot rely forever on an ad hoc system that metes out insufficient penalties and is based on shaky legal ground. Export controls exist, first and foremost, for reasons of national security.…”