Political Quotes

“Every single reduction in strategic systems that the gentleman from California spoke of and the gentleman from Indiana spoke of are taking place; all those reductions are taking place because we signed START I. The Russians signed START I. We signed START I. And we agreed to reduce these nuclear weapons with our own taxpayer dollars. That means the Russians agreed to reduce their systems with rubles, we agreed to reduce our systems at our expense with dollars, and we proceeded on that course to go down approximately from 12,000 nuclear weapons to about 6,000, and we have been proceeding on that course. We never agreed that we would pay the Russians for the reduction that they were making under START I. We never agreed we would subsidize that. But in 1991 we felt that the Russians were so fragile with that new democracy and that attempted democracy that we would help them. So we implemented Nunn-Lugar, and a lot of us agreed with that; it was a good program. The point is that the Russians need to have their feet held to the fire.”