Political Quotes

“now the rest of the story about tritium. The good news is that when we are talking about tritium, something we ought to be talking about, my good friend the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Wamp) is absolutely right, it is an essential component to keep a nuclear deterrent force operational. I speak about it from representing a district that has made tritium for the United States military for about 50 years. There is parochial interests involved. If they do not have a dog in this tritium, they make a decision they think is good for the country. But let me point a couple things out to my colleagues. The reactor they are talking about that TVA owns is 85 percent complete. They do not have the money to complete it. Nobody will buy it, and they are trying to dump it on the Department of Energy. Let me tell my colleagues what would be so dangerous to let this happen. The gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey) is right. Seldom do we agree on anything. And this is an historic agreement in Congress when the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Graham) and the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey) can agree on something. But if we allow a commercial reactor to make a nuclear weapons product, we are taking 50 years of American public policy and turning it on its head at a time the world is in the most danger it has been in recent times. And what are we going to tell the Indians when they use their commercial power plants to make nuclear weapons? "Do not do that like us"?”