Tina Smith: “The truth of the matter--and the Senator knows this full well--the administration did not request any funding in their…”

“The truth of the matter--and the Senator knows this full well--the administration did not request any funding in their budget for the ASAT Program. Unless I am missing something in the logic here--I do not believe I am; maybe the Senator would like me to miss it and would like others to miss it--unless I misunderstand something, if the administration does not request it and the policy folks do not want it, if we send it back to the space architect, who is a policy person, to study it, you can pretty well conclude what the results will be. They will not fund it. When I say this is a deliberate attempt to kill the Kinetic Energy ASAT Program, I mean what I say. It is true. It will kill it. The other thing that we need to understand here, the Army supports the Kinetic Energy ASAT Program. They objected to the rescission list. They objected to this being listed as a rescission item. They did not win the debate. The policy people won. The Senator's amendment sends this back to the space architect. He will study it diligently over the next few weeks, months, whatever it takes, and then announce that we do not need it, and kill it. This is not an objective decision here. This person was not objective. This person made up his mind already. He does not want it.”