Political Quotes

“the Senate returned yesterday to an issue which, in recent years, has polarized our debate on national security and foreign policy. An amendment proposed by Senator Warner allowed the President to add $814 million to the research and development budget for missile defense, money that was not recommended by the Armed Services Committee. It also provided the President the authority to allocate these funds to ``antiterrorism'' projects, but I have no reason to believe the President would choose this latter option. Senator Warner's amendment was passed with a second-degree amendment by Senator Levin that emphasized that combating terrorism should be the top priority for the use of these funds, although the President could still allocate the entire $814 million to missile defense activities. It has been my hope that the formal U.S. withdrawal from the Anti- Ballistic Missile Treaty, an event which took place less than 2 weeks ago, would emerge as a real turning point in the debate over national missile defense. From this point forward, I fervently wish that officials of all stripes--executive and legislative, Democratic and Republican--will be freed to evaluate missile defense as we would any other major defense initiative. The touchstone for evaluating any missile defense must be the test that the American people sent us here to propound: Will this program make the United States more secure, or less so?”