Pete Sessions: “I thank Senator Allard for his great leadership on the issue of national missile defense, space technology, and all the…”

“I thank Senator Allard for his great leadership on the issue of national missile defense, space technology, and all the related issues. We are fortunate to have him as chairman of the Strategic Forces Subcommittee. He understands the issue. He has been dealing with it for many years. He studied it and brought his scientific background to the issue. I agree with him, and I also very much agree with the comments of our distinguished Senator Jon Kyl from Arizona, who also has studied this issue for many years. We voted back when President Clinton was President, and he signed the bill to deploy a national missile defense system as soon as technologically feasible. It was an amendment, I recall, by Senator Thad Cochran and Senator Joe Lieberman. It passed by a very large vote, and we made a commitment to do that. There was a lot of debate about it then. I think some people still are somewhat motivated by their criticism of President Reagan's Star Wars maybe; that this would not work; it could not work. They just did not like it. But we voted on it after a national commission had reported unanimously that we needed to have this defense. Overwhelmingly the Senators voted for it. Since then, there has been a steadfast effort to slow, delay, and undermine the actual deployment of this system.”