Jerry Nadler: “I rise to support the McKinney-Rohrabacher amendment to establish an arms sales code of conduct. After more than 30…”

“I rise to support the McKinney-Rohrabacher amendment to establish an arms sales code of conduct. After more than 30 years of the cold war with record high peacetime defense budgets and a tremendous amount of global arms exports, the United States has left the world armed to the teeth with millions of tons of bombs, jets, submarines, and artillery. The world is awash in weapons. These excessive exports have fueled armed conflicts throughout the world, destabilized regions, and have forced governments of developing nations to spend more money on arms and less money on the vital needs of their people. In 1994 alone the United States sold or gave $13 billion of weapons to almost 100 countries, many of which, according to the State Department's Country Reports on Human Rights, are run by abusive or non-democratic regimes. We must put an end to this deadly cycle, and this amendment would do just that by giving Congress a real role in shaping U.S. arms export policy.”