Tom Harkin: “I rise again to restore some greater sensibility to the budget resolution before us. As I said on the floor earlier this…”

“I rise again to restore some greater sensibility to the budget resolution before us. As I said on the floor earlier this week, the resolution before us is generally good. I have complimented the Senator from Tennessee and the Senator from New Mexico for bringing us a tough budget that keeps within the deficit reduction package we passed last year. It is very tight and imposes some caps that will be difficult to operate under, but such is life. That is what we have to do here. Again, as I pointed out yesterday, within this budget there is a $513 million increase for star wars. Last year--and I want to make this very clear--last year we had a vote on the Senate floor to cut star wars funding by about $400 million, and it passed 50 to 48. What I am trying to do is keep the star wars funding at last year's level and not increase it another $500 million. So I say to those Senators, if you voted last year to cut the star wars funding by $400 million, let us keep it at that level for next year. My amendment still leaves within the ballistic missile defense structure $2 billion--actually more than $2 billion--for theater missile defense programs. We do not need to put $513 million, $1/2 billion, into x-ray lasers and other exotic space-based weapons because we have other programs which I think have a higher priority. We have spent $33 billion on star wars, and what do we have to show for it? Not a thing. The Soviet Union is gone but the star wars budget lives on.”