Political Quotes

“speaking on my time under my control on this amendment, I wish to express my opposition to this Levin-Reid amendment would transfer $50 million from the Ground-based Midcourse Defense, GMD, program to the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. The impact of this amendment would be, first and foremost, to delay the fielding of ballistic missile defense capabilities to protect the U.S. homeland against the threat posed by long-range ballistic missiles; and secondly, to cause a break in the production of ground-based interceptors, GBIs--a production break that would cost the government $270 million to restart. While I agree with the sponsors of this amendment that the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program is an important national security initiative, the defense of our homeland against the growing threat of long-range ballistic missiles is equally, if not more, important. Asking us to choose between missile defense protection and CTR is a false choice: we need to do both. And, in fact, this bill fully funds the President's requested amount for both programs. The bill before the Senate authorizes the requested amount of $415.5 million for CTR programs within the Department of Defense, and $1.6 billion for other non-proliferation efforts in the Department of Energy. There is no current need for extra CTR funds; in fact, the CTR program has an unobligated balance of some $100 million.…”