Ed Markey: “tomorrow President Obama will make a historic visit to Hiroshima, the site of the first atomic bombing. He will become…”

“tomorrow President Obama will make a historic visit to Hiroshima, the site of the first atomic bombing. He will become the first sitting President of the United States to do so, and I commend him for this long overdue Presidential recognition. Having traveled to Hiroshima in 1985 to witness the commemoration of the 40th anniversary of that atomic bombing, I know from personal experience that any visit there serves as a powerful reminder of America's responsibility to reduce the risk of nuclear war. That risk remains as real today as it was nearly 71 years ago when we dropped that bomb that killed 140,000 people in 1 day. In the last few decades, important progress has been made to reduce the threat of nuclear war. The United States and Russia have reduced the size of their nuclear arsenals. The beginning of an additional change is going to happen in 2018 when both the United States and Russia will have no more than 1,550 deployed strategic warheads after implementation of the New START treaty. But that progress has come at a cost. In exchange for the support of Senate Republicans for passage of the New START treaty in 2010, President Obama promised to fund major upgrades to America's nuclear arsenal. Since then, the extent of these upgrades and their costs have swelled. Today it is estimated that President Obama's nuclear ``modernization'' plan will end up costing U.S. taxpayers nearly $1 trillion over the next 30 years.…”