Ed Markey: “This debate has taken on the characteristics of ancestor worship, and I understand it. I know it's hard for individuals…”

“This debate has taken on the characteristics of ancestor worship, and I understand it. I know it's hard for individuals to let go of the Cold War, to let go of an era where foreign policy was characterized by this bitter rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. The reality: We won. It's over. We didn't just win. It was basically a world where there's unipower now. It's us. The Chinese only have 40 to 50 nuclear missiles. The Russians have already dramatically reduced their weapons. The likelihood of a nuclear war between the United States and Russia is negative zero. And yet there are Members that don't want to see any reductions in our nuclear weapons force, notwithstanding the fact that those extra expenditures then would have to come out of other budgets, including the budget for the National Institutes of Health to find a cure for cancer or Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. And so we have this curious disconnect between the reality of the world that we live in today and the understandable but erroneous commitment that many Members on the other side have to a relic of a Cold War-era rivalry that no longer can withstand fiscal scrutiny. So let's just take this debate about whether or not the United States is vulnerable. Each one of our submarine-based nuclear weapons systems have 96 independently targetable warheads onboard.…”