Political Quotes

“just a few days ago, the Congressional Budget Office released a paper entitled ``Budgetary and Technical Implications of the Administration's Plan for National Missile Defense.'' I bring this paper to the Senate's attention because I believe it is misleading and confusing. It has given support to critics of the program who also have contributed to the confusion. Some reporters and editors have characterized this study as a ``budget estimate'' of our National Missile Defense program which shows that the costs will be far higher than previously predicted. This is not so. The paper is not a budgetary scoring of legislation that the CBO traditionally engages in. This is a paper of a kind the CBO occasionally produces in response to Congressional requests, providing it can spare analysts from their other duties. The request for this paper was recently made by members of the Senate and the CBO acknowledges that it had insufficient time to fully consider all of the questions it was asked to address. The paper puts the total cost for a National Missile Defense system at $49 billion. I say ``a'' National Missile Defense system because the CBO paper did not examine the program actually in place and for which we have received estimates in the past, but rather one that its analysts thought should be in place. Mr. Ken Bacon, the Defense Department spokesman, characterized the estimate as an ``apples to gold apples'' comparison.…”