Jeff Bingaman: “let me explain my amendment and then hopefully discuss with the two managers, the chief sponsor of the bill, my friend…”

“let me explain my amendment and then hopefully discuss with the two managers, the chief sponsor of the bill, my friend from Mississippi, and the manager on the Democratic side, my friend from Michigan, their understanding of what the underlying bill provides and the appropriateness of my amendment. We had a hearing the other day in the Armed Services Committee. Mr. Gansler was there, and he testified that the administration's plan, with regard to this national missile defense program, is to handle this as they would handle other major weapons programs, weapons systems; that is, they would proceed with development, but they would not go the next step, they would not go into full production and deployment until they had done the necessary operations tests to determine the effectiveness of the system. I have had some concerns, frankly, about this legislation. I opposed this in the last Congress because of those concerns, concerns that we were, in this legislation, changing those ground rules on the Department of Defense and saying to them, ``No, you should not do the appropriate testing. In this case, you should go ahead and proceed to deploy the system regardless of how ready it is for prime time.'' I guess that has been the concern that has prompted me to offer this amendment.”