Wayne Allard: “to suggest that somehow or the other this particular President does not want to be a leader in reducing nuclear threats…”

“to suggest that somehow or the other this particular President does not want to be a leader in reducing nuclear threats is absurd. I call to the attention of the Members of the Senate the Moscow Treaty which was put together at the first of this administration. He brought down some 8,000 warheads to 1,700 to 2,200 active warheads. The result from our potential adversaries is to produce more nuclear warheads. Our adversaries are not necessarily responding to what we do in the United States. Take India and Afghanistan. They are more interested in how each other's country is responding to that issue. They are not that concerned about what is happening here. Despite that, they continue to be proliferating. And there is always the potential they could be proliferating warheads that could have an impact on us. We know our adversaries are building hard bunkers, deeply buried. This particular piece of legislation is not putting in place the engineering or development of nuclear warheads. I have just shared that language with my colleagues. But what we are looking at is a study. I think it is foolhardy and irresponsible to not even look at the facts, to not call for a study to see where we are in relation to the rest of the world. We know other countries, other than just Afghanistan, such as North Korea--I don't see a real stepdown as far as Russia and other countries around the world. We know Iran, admittedly, is looking at a nuclear weapons program.”