Tom Harkin: “Even yet today, to maintain this nuclear stockpile, the United States spends roughly $30 billion a year. That is just…”

“Even yet today, to maintain this nuclear stockpile, the United States spends roughly $30 billion a year. That is just about three times the amount that we are spending on all medical research at the National Institutes of Health, to find the causes and cures of things like heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimer's, diabetes, Parkinson's disease. Three times what we are spending on this arsenal than all medical research. We are trying to come up with money for NIH. We had a sense-of-the-Senate resolution last week--98 to 0--to support a doubling of funding for NIH. That would bring it up to about $25 billion a year, not even up to this level. Yet we do not have the money to even get about a 4 or 5 percent increase at NIH. This is an important anniversary. It must be noted. And we must mark it as hopefully the last anniversary in this long journey to get a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.”