Pete Domenici: “Once a year, three civilians certify to the President of the United States that, to the best of their knowledge, the…”

“Once a year, three civilians certify to the President of the United States that, to the best of their knowledge, the nuclear stockpile is intact, safe, and reliable. That has been going on for well over 60 years. But only 8 years ago, or 9, we changed the way those men concluded the weapons were safe and reliable and ready. Properly or improperly, we said no more underground testing. Prior to that, every time a certification was made to the President, it was predicated upon the single best way to determine the validity of a weapon, and that was to test it. Now we have said let us do it another way. Let us send a signal to the world we don't want to test underground. This amendment is relevant, which I will tell you about in a moment. We said to the scientists, How much money do you need to get the best equipment, including new equipment, to determine the validity of the weapons without testing? That is called science-based stockpile stewardship.”