John Spratt: “there were 99 amendments filed to the defense authorization bill. Nine were made in order: six for Republicans, three…”

“there were 99 amendments filed to the defense authorization bill. Nine were made in order: six for Republicans, three for Democrats. Among those not made in order was an amendment that I offered along with the gentleman from California (Mr. Schiff) which would simply have restored this bill so that the President's request for cooperative threat reduction, our efforts better known as Nunn-Lugar to get rid of Russian nuclear materials, chemical weapons and biological weapons, could be fully funded and fully expressed, freed of some encumbrances entered into the bill in the committee mark and allowed to go forward basically and only as the President has requested. That is all we sought to do. But this is critically important because it addresses a particular facility in Russia called Schuch'ye which has maybe 75 percent of the deadliest chemical weapons, sarin and VX and other nerve agents, contained in Russia. We are right now at the threshold of beginning a project that would destroy those weapons, and this bill as now written without my amendment would hamstring and hinder the undertaking of that project.”