Political Quotes

“Let me thank the ranking member and let me thank the gentleman, Mr. Sensenbrenner, who brought this bill before us. I rise in support of the bill, and I wanted to use this occasion to make some additional comments. We recognize that the proliferation of nuclear weapons is the greatest threat that our country faces. I took a trip with Chairman Young to visit the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria, looking at the weapons development program in Iran. This is a big issue that the Congress has got to pay a lot of attention to. But I also wanted to take a minute as a member of the Energy Appropriations Subcommittee to talk about the administration's request on both nonproliferation and modernization. The nonproliferation request is flatlined. The weapons modernization, which is important as relates to our obligations and agreements relative to the START treaty, is well funded. But we think there are some gaps in terms of the planning. And we need to understand more fully, in terms of both the B- 61 and the W-76, where we're headed in terms of the long-term package. So this bill is important because it deals with terrorism threats in terms of nuclear weapons. Part of dealing with that is to make sure that we continue the work of Senators Nunn and Lugar in nonproliferation. It's also important for our country to modernize our weapons, and to do that with a full understanding that we cannot do that on a year-to-year basis.…”