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1A) Yucca Mountain
r. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, I am going to talk a little this morning

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   What we are doing is following the law that was established for the disposition of this particular matter, giving the State of Nevada an opportunity for a veto, and also providing procedures for overriding that process by action of both the House and the Senate. As I have indicated, the House has acted.

   The expedited procedures under discussion are set forth in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982. One of the elements of the procedures is a specific provision that states once a resolution is on the Senate calendar, it shall be in order for any Member of the Senate to move to proceed to the consideration of the resolution.

   We have heard the majority leader and others suggesting the provision is outside the Senate rules and turns the rules on their head. That is simply not true. It is the law. We are following the law.

   I grant that the provision is unusual, but it is neither unique nor contrary to Senate rules. As a matter of fact, it is part of the Senate rules. The entire expedited procedure was adopted as part of the rules, and the Senate reserved its right to change the procedure. I want to quote from the statute because I think it is important every Member understand we are not setting precedent.

   The provision enacted is:

   A, as an exercise of the rulemaking power of the Senate, and as such they are deemed a part of the rules of the Senate, but applicable only with respect to the procedure to be followed in the Senate in the case of resolutions of repository siting approval, and such provisions supersede other rules of the Senate only to the extent that they are inconsistent with other rules.

   I grant you, it sounds as if it was written by a Philadelphia lawyer, and it probably was:

   B, with full recognition of the constitutional right of the Senate to change the rules (so far as relating to the procedure of the Senate) at any time, in the same manner and to the same extent as in the case of any other rule of the Senate.

   What that means is, obviously, the Senate can change its own rules. It is that simple. I do not know why they did not say it that way. Nevertheless, we have to live with what we have.

   So let's be clear. What we are doing on procedure is following the rules of the Senate that were agreed to in 1982 and that have been in place under both Republican and Democratic control of this body since that time. These were not last-minute additions, something that just came up, that was slipped into the legislative conference in the wee hours of the morning. The expedited procedures included, one, the provision for any Member to move to the consideration of the resolution and, two, the provision that the procedures were adopted as an exercise of rulemaking in the Senate, and both were contained in the underlying legislation in 1982.

   The provisions were not necessarily novel. In fact, they were almost identical to those considered in the previous Congress and that passed the Senate as part of S. 2189.

   For historical information, S. 2189 passed the Senate in the 96th Congress in 1980 under Democrat leadership and was sponsored primarily by Senators Johnston of Louisiana and Jackson of Washington.

   When the Senate changed hands in the 97th Congress, the identical provision was included in S. 1662 when it was introduced by the new chairman of the Energy Committee, Senator McClure of Idaho.

   That measure was jointly referred to both the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and the Committee on Environment and Public Works. Both Committees reported the legislation favorably with substitute amendments and both substitutes contained the same expedited procedures as a rulemaking of the Senate.

   This was not a surprise. The Senate was well aware of the provisions. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act was debated at length in the Senate in 1982 and no one objected to the expedited procedures on the language providing that ``any Member'' could make the motion to proceed.

   So for those who are reflecting on the generalization somehow this was an arbitrary action and not thought out, I again refer to the history of this matter as it has been presented in this body. Let's put that behind us.

   It is fair everyone understood that the language was essential to any concept of a State objection, whether the State had the obligation to carry the argument and obtain an affirmative vote as the authorization committees wanted or if the administration had the burden to obtain a Joint Resolution of approval as proposed by Congressman Moakley--chairman of the House Rules Committee at that time--and eventually contained in the floor legislation.

   The language was before the Senate during debate leading to the initial passage in April of 1982, and again a final agreement was reached in December of 1982. All Members understood the heart of the process was that each House would have to vote--the House already voted; now it is our obligation--and further says: and the only way to guarantee that was an expedited process where any Senator could make the motion to proceed.

   We will have any Senator make that motion on the 9th or thereabouts but we still have not determined who that is.

   Previously, the Senate understood the majority leader or the chairman might make that motion or they may not want to carry out the mandate of the statute, so it provided explicitly in the event the majority leader or the chairman of the committee of jurisdiction did not do so, and any Senator could bring this issue before the Senate. That is obviously what will happen.

   We did it, however, with full knowledge of the Senate rules, and the Senate adopted it as an exercise in rulemaking.

   Finally, the process is not the usual way, but it is part of the rule. Second, it is not a precedent and by its terms is limited only to this resolution. Senator George Mitchell characterized in 1982 when it was adopted, it was designed to eliminate any ``dilatory or obstructionist'' provisions.

   Therefore, I hope we can end the rhetoric on this that somehow we are not following the Senate rules, that this is some novel provision of which the Senate was not aware. I hope we can focus on the substance of the joint resolution and move to its consideration as the Senate provided in 1982.

   The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, of which I have been a member, former chairman, and now ranking member, has favorably reported the resolution, and we have a good report that I suggest my colleagues read. The report filed by our chairman, Senator Bingaman, disposes of every objection raised by the State of Nevada and reflects the committee's considered recommendation. Our committee has discharged its responsibility. Now it is time for the full Senate to discharge its obligation.

   I yield the floor.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nebraska.

   Mr. HAGEL. Madam President, I rise today to speak on the need to move forward with a permanent nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, NV. Doing so is in the best interest of America's national security, economy, energy policy, public safety, and environment.

   Special interest groups and activists have capitalized on this issue--using scare tactics and doomsday scenarios to alarm the public. But as a member of the Senate Energy Committee, I have listened to both sides, reviewed the information presented by the experts, and attended the hearings. It makes sense to store our Nation's high-level nuclear waste in a single, scientifically and environmentally sound, secure, and remote location.

   Twenty years have passed since Congress called for the creation of an underground repository for the Nation's spent nuclear fuel--under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982. Senator MURKOWSKI has referred to the history of that act. During that time, about $7 billion from U.S. electric consumers have been invested in finding the most suitable location for this project.

   More than 45,000 metric tons of nuclear waste is currently stored at 131

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   This nuclear waste is stored above ground in facilities built for temporary storage only. Many of these storage sites are near major cities and waterways.

   Yucca Mountain represents two decades of the most comprehensive environmental and technical assessments ever conducted anywhere on the planet. The mountain is located in one of the most isolated and arid locations in the United States. Only 30 miles to the west lies Death Valley; to the north is the Department of Energy's nuclear test site where some 900 nuclear weapons have been tested.

   The repository itself would be located about 1,000 feet underground in sold rock to keep its contents safe from significant impacts, including major earthquakes. The mountain's natural geological attributes would be reinforced with man-made barriers.

   Some opponents of the repository have centered this debate on the transportation issue. They point out that there are risks involved. Of course there are risks involved--we do not live in a risk-free society. There is risk with everything we do. What is important is that the risk is acceptable in order to accomplish the objective. In this case, the risk is absolutely acceptable--because it is a risk we can control, we can manage, we can deal with.

   Shipments of nuclear material have been taking place in the United States for the past three decades and will continue, with or without Yucca Mountain.

   About 3,000 shipments of spent nuclear fuel have occurred since 1965--covering 1.7 million miles--with no injuries, no fatalities, and no environmental damage due to radioactive release. In that time, not one spent fuel container has ever been breached.

   Spent nuclear fuel, which is nonexplosive and nonflammable, is shipped in specially designed and tested multilayered steel casks. These casks have been designed to withstand extreme heat, prolonged submersion in water, and severe impacts--such as being broadsided by a 120-ton locomotive traveling at 80 miles per hour. If the Yucca Mountain repository becomes a reality, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission must survey and approve all routes, and all shipments would be monitored 24 hours a day through a satellite tracking system--with the coordinated effort of local, State, and federal law enforcement agencies.

   A ``no'' vote on Yucca would be devastating for the future of nuclear power in this country. While that is the objective of the activists, we cannot afford such a catastrophic loss.

   Nuclear power accounts for 20 percent of the Nation's electric power. It powers 40 percent of our Navy's combat vessels. Experts in the fuel cell industry say that nuclear power plants are the only way to produce enough hydrogen if America is to ever become a country powered by fuel cells, instead of fossil fuels. This is all directly connected to Yucca Mountain.

   We should not forget that there will be a large financial burden if this project is rejected. The Federal Government will be in default of its obligations, and would owe utilities and contract holders as much as $100 billion. This is on top of the billions of dollars already invested in the project. Then we would be forced to begin a new process of looking at other options for a repository. If not Yucca, where? Hanford, WA, is often mentioned as a viable alternative. The fact is, or we must deal with, 45,000 metric tons of nuclear waste--and more on the way.

   The bottom line is that this problem is not going to disappear, and the world will not become any safer by deferring this problem. We either deal with this problem today--or we pass it onto future generations. That is not an acceptable option. We do have an acceptable, safe and responsible option.

   We must move forward with the Yucca Mountain repository. It is the right and responsible thing to do.

   I yield the floor.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.

   Mr. ENSIGN. Madam President, we will save rebutting the comments of our colleague from Nevada for another time. We do want to talk about the Yucca Mountain project this morning, but I want to talk about the procedure in the Senate on which people have been focusing.

   In the modern history of the Senate, nobody other than the majority leader or his designee has successfully offered a motion to proceed. That being said, supporters of Yucca Mountain claim that breaking tradition would be alright because the process outlined in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act is supposedly unique.

   The procedure in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act is not unique, nor is it required--it is merely permitted. There are many statutes containing expedited procedures. When the Congress has determined that it is appropriate to override the traditional power of the majority leader to schedule the floor, it has drafted legislation like the War Powers Act which does so.

   The War Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1544 et seq.) states:

   Any joint resolution or bill so reported (from Committee) shall become the pending business of the House in question (in the case of the Senate the time for debate shall be equally divided between the proponents and the opponents), and shall be voted on within three calendar days thereafter, unless such House shall otherwise determine by yeas and nays.

   Unlike this War Powers provision, there is no requirement in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act that Congress take any action with regard to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act resolution. Congress in the past has used a variety of techniques to expedite privileged business, and in the case of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act did not choose to use some of the more time-sensitive techniques. Indeed, the 1982 act anticipates that a vote on the Yucca Mountain resolution might not occur--that it might be blocked. If the deadline passes, then the statute giving the State of Nevada a veto will have been carried out. That was part of the 1982 compromise.

   It is true that an expedited procedure was put into law, pursuant to the rulemaking power of the Congress, as Congress has put in law many expedited procedures. But no one other than the majority leader or his designee has ever moved successfully to go to any resolution, or bill, which has

   expedited procedures written into law. Any successful attempt to do that now would change forever the way that the Senate sets its agenda.

   The junior Senator from Alaska stated that he does ``not know that it really matters very much'' who makes the motion to proceed to the Yucca Mountain resolution.

   I say that it does matter. It matters very much. It is the Senate rules that allow any Senator to move to proceed to a matter, or to force a vote on the motion to proceed, but it is now a well-established practice that the Senate will only proceed to a matter the majority leader wishes to call up, and that the Senate has not proceeded to any matter that the majority leader has declined to call up for decades past. It is the proposed change in this practice that is a direct challenge to the role of any majority leader.

   The Nuclear Waste Policy Act does not make the resolution the pending business of the Senate, even though some laws--such as the War Powers Resolution--do take away the prerogative of the majority leader by making a resolution the pending business without any motion to proceed being required. Had the Senate wished to do that in this case, it could have followed the language of the War Powers Resolution.

   If a Senator other than the majority leader feels he or she has the right to call up privileged matters without deferring to the majority leader, then the Senate will have undergone a dramatic sea change in the way it operates.

   The procedures in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act were put in place pursuant to the rulemaking power of the Senate, and they have no higher standing because they are written into law. There is no more fundamental prerogative that attaches to the majority leader than the right to set the Senate agenda.

   I hope my colleagues on this side of the aisle will think long and hard before they challenge the historic role of the majority leader. The traditions of this institution deserve to be protected.

   Madam President, in the coming days leading up to the vote, we will be laying out some of the things my colleague from Nebraska has asked. What

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   I suggest the absence of a quorum.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

   The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

   Mr. REID. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

   Mr. REID. Madam President, I was unable to listen to the full statements of the Senator from Nebraska and the Senator from Alaska, but I have been told by my staff some of the things they said.

   I have to say basically the same thing I have been saying for a long time. The American public has come to the realization that what the proponents of Yucca Mountain are saying is absolutely without foundation. For example, one of the issues they talk about is moving the nuclear waste out of the many sites where it sits now and putting it into one site. Isn't that the best thing to do?

   Of course, but we have had articles in papers all across America showing that it is a sham because you can never get rid of the waste where it is being generated. They will have to move 3,000 tons a year. They have 46,000 tons stored now. They generate 2,000 tons. When you take a spent fuel rod out of a nuclear generator, you have to put it in a cooling pond for 5 years because it is so hot and so radioactive. They only use 5 percent of the power and radioactivity in one of those rods. After 5 percent is used, they have to take it out and cool it. They can't move it for 5 years. For anyone to suggest there is going to be one place where all the waste will be; someplace in the western part of the United States is foolishness.

   This is not the Senator from Nevada talking. It is in newspapers and scientific journals all over America.

   For the first 18 or 20 years, the nuclear waste issue centered on the science of Yucca Mountain. I could lay out a picture to the Chair for the people of Michigan or any other State showing how science at Yucca Mountain is very bad. But that doesn't matter anymore because that is not the question. The question is, How are we going to get the waste to Yucca

   Mountain? You can do it three ways: highways, railroad, and barges on the water. That is all you can do. Nuclear waste will travel through 43 or 45 different States.

   There is a Web site that has been developed, Mapscience.com. Pull it up, and it shows any address in America and how near the nuclear waste will travel to your home, or to your school, or to the playground, or to your business. This site has alerted many people to the dangers of the transportation of nuclear waste. Since that site was put up 2 weeks ago, there have been over 200,000 hits. People want to find out from where the waste will go. What they find out is not good, so these people have been sending letters to their Senators and talking to their neighbors.

   The transportation of nuclear waste is wrong. My friend from Nebraska said the risk is acceptable. Acceptable to whom? The Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, when asked last week about what would happen if Yucca Mountain didn't go through right now, said ``nothing.'' There is room to store waste onsite at every reactor in America. There are power generators now that are storing nuclear waste onsite in dry-cask storage canisters. That is what a large segment of the scientific community said we should do. It is safer than trying to move it.

   To transport this is unacceptable. We are talking about 100,000 truckloads of nuclear waste, 20,000 trainloads, and thousands of barges full of nuclear waste.

   Recently, there were editorials in the Denver Post and in the St. Petersburg Times, the largest newspaper in Florida and the largest newspaper in Colorado, criticizing the program--and in places all over the country; places where the nuclear power industry has spent tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions; there are articles describing the trips sponsored by the nuclear power industry. They take people to Las Vegas and wine and dine them so they can show them Yucca Mountain. They spend 2 hours at Yucca Mountain and several days in one of the fine hotels in Las Vegas. Congressional staff have been taken back out there on numerous occasions. Lobbying activities are intense.

   For example, for the first time in the State of Nevada, Governor Guinn said we should hire somebody to help lobby back here. You have no idea how hard it is to find somebody to help us because the nuclear power industry has bought Washington, DC.

   So I appreciate the power of the Nuclear Energy Institute. It is powerful, and I understand that. But I also understand the American people, and they now--since September 11--realize every truckload, every trainload, every barge is a target of opportunity for terrorists.

   No matter what the problems may be where these nuclear generators are located, the problems are amplified by trying to move nuclear waste. We would have, around the country, the potential not for ``a'' ``dirty'' bomb, but hundreds and thousands of ``dirty'' bombs. How are you going to transport nuclear waste safely? You cannot. We know a shoulder-fired weapon will pierce one of these containers. We know that if you leave them on site and cover them with cement, it will be very safe.

   So, Madam President, I try to be as quiet and nonresponsive as I can be when these statements are made. But today I had to respond because I think it just simply was out of line for someone to say the risk is acceptable. It is not acceptable. It is not acceptable at all.

   We are going to have, probably, sometime shortly after the Fourth of July recess, an opportunity to vote on the procedure, which violates what we do around here. The majority leader does not want this to come forward. We are going to see how people will vote on that because my friends in the minority have to understand someday they will be in the majority, I am sorry to say, and when they are in the majority, the same rules will apply to them.

   You have to be very careful who brings matters to the floor. I have the greatest respect for the junior Senator from Alaska. He is my friend. I have worked with him on many different issues. On this, we have a basic disagreement in philosophy.

   My friend, the senior Senator from Nebraska, is a fine man, certainly an American patriot. But for him to come to the floor and say the risk is acceptable is something I cannot let go without a response. It simply is wrong, and I want him to know I believe he is wrong.

   I suggest the absence of a quorum.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

   The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

   Mr. CRAIG. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

   Mr. CRAIG. Madam President, how much time remains in morning business?

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Four minutes remain.

   Mr. CRAIG. Madam President, let me take that 4 minutes because I know my colleagues want to move forward with DOD authorization.

END

1B) Nonproliferation Related Amendments to the National Defense Authorization
AMENDMENT No. 4007

The Senator from Virginia [Mr. WARNER], for himself, Mr. Miller, Mr. Lott, Mr. Stevens, Mr. Cochran, Mr. Allard, Mr. Kyl, Mr. Smith of New Hampshire, Mr. Inhofe, Mr. Thurmond, Mr. Sessions, Mr. Roberts, Mr. Hutchinson, Mr. Bunning, Mr. Helms, Mr. McCain, Mr. Nickles, and Mr. Hagel, proposes an amendment numbered 4007. The amendment is as follows: (Purpose: To provide an additional amount for ballistic missile defense or combating terrorism in accordance with national security priorities of the President)

On page 217, between lines 13 and 14, insert the following:

SEC. 1010. ADDITIONAL AMOUNT FOR BALLISTIC MISSILE DEFENSE OR COMBATING TERRORISM IN ACCORDANCE WITH NATIONAL SECURITY PRIORITIES OF THE PRESIDENT.

(a) AUTHORIZATION OF APPROPRIATIONS.--In addition to other amounts authorized to be appropriated by other provisions of this division, there is hereby authorized to be appropriated for the Department of Defense for fiscal year 2003, $814,300,000 for whichever of the following purposes the President determines that the additional amount is necessary in the national security interests of the United States:
(1) Research, development, test, and evaluation for ballistic missile defense programs of the Department of Defense.
(2) Activities of the Department of Defense for combating terrorism at home and abroad.

(b) OFFSET.--The total amount authorized to be appropriated under the other provisions of this division is hereby reduced by $814,300,000 to reflect the amounts that the Secretary determines unnecessary by reason of a revision of assumptions regarding inflation that are applied as a result of the midsession review of the budget conducted by the Office of Management and Budget during the spring and early summer of 2002.

(c) PRIORITY FOR ALLOCATING FUNDS.--In the expenditure of additional funds made available by a lower rate of inflation, the top priority shall be the use of such additional funds for Department of Defense activities for combating terrorism and protecting the American people at home and abroad.

AMENDMENT NO. 4133
At the appropriate place insert the following:
SEC. . RUSSIAN TACTICAL NUCLEAR WEAPONS.
(a) FINDINGS.-- The Congress makes the following findings:

(1) Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations, in addition to rogue states, are known to be working to acquire weapons of mass destruction, and particularly nuclear warheads.

(2) The largest and least secure potential source of nuclear warheads for terrorists or rogue states is Russia's arsenal of non-strategic or ``tactical'' nuclear warheads, which according to unclassified estimates numbers from 7,000 to 12,000 warheads. Security at Russian nuclear weapon storage sites is insufficient, and tactical nuclear warheads are more vulnerable to terrorist or rogue state acquisition due to their smaller size, greater portability, and greater numbers compared to Russian strategic nuclear weapons.

(3) Russia's tactical nuclear warheads were not covered by the START treaties or the recent Moscow Treaty. Russia is not legally bound to reduce its tactical nuclear stockpile and the United States has no inspection rights regarding Russia's tactical nuclear arsenal.

AMENDMENT NO. 4135 (Purpose: To prohibit the use of authorized funds for research, development, test, evaluation, procurement, or deployment of nuclear armed interceptors of a missile defense system)
On page 34, after line 23, insert the following:

SEC. 226. LIMITATION ON USE OF FUNDS FOR NUCLEAR ARMED INTERCEPTORS. None of the funds authorized to be appropriated by this or any other Act may be used for research, development, test, evaluation, procurement, or deployment of nuclear armed interceptors of a missile defense system.

AMENDMENT NO. 4160 (Purpose: To provide for monitoring implementation of the 1979 United States-China Agreement on Cooperation in Science and Technology)
On page 281, between lines 5 and 6, insert the following:
SEC. 1215. MONITORING IMPLEMENTATION OF THE 1979 UNITED STATES-CHINA AGREEMENT ON COOPERATION IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY.

(a) RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE OFFICE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY COOPERATION.--The Office of Science and Technology Cooperation of the Department of State shall monitor the implementation of the 1979 United States-China Agreement on Cooperation in Science and Technology and its protocols (in this section referred to as the ``Agreement''), and keep a systematic account of the protocols thereto. The Office shall coordinate the activities of all agencies of the United States Government that carry out cooperative activities under the Agreement.

(b) GUIDELINES.--The Secretary of State shall ensure that all activities conducted under the Agreement and its protocols comply with applicable laws and regulations concerning the transfer of militarily sensitive and dual-use technologies.

(c) REPORTING REQUIREMENT.--
(1) IN GENERAL.--Not later than April 1, 2004, and every two years thereafter, the Secretary of State, shall submit a report to Congress, in both classified and unclassified form, on the implementation of the Agreement and activities thereunder.
(2) REPORT ELEMENTS.--Each report under this subsection shall provide an evaluation of the benefits of the Agreement to the Chinese economy, military, and defense industrial base and shall include the following:
(A) An accounting of all activities conducted under the Agreement since the previous report, and a projection of activities to be undertaken in the next two years.
(B) An estimate of the costs to the United States to administer the Agreement within the period covered by the report. [Page: S6119] GPO's PDF
(C) An assessment of how the Agreement has influenced the policies of the People's Republic of China toward scientific and technological cooperation with the United States.
(D) An analysis of the involvement of Chinese nuclear weapons and military missile specialists in the activities of the Joint Commission.
(E) A determination of the extent to which the activities conducted under the Agreement have enhanced the military and industrial base of the People's Republic of China, and an assessment of the impact of projected activities for the next two years, including transfers of technology, on China's economic and military capabilities.
(F) Any recommendations on improving the monitoring of the activities of the Commission by the Secretaries of Defense and State.

(3) CONSULTATION PRIOR TO SUBMISSION OF REPORTS.--The Secretary of State shall prepare the report in consultation with the Secretaries of Commerce, Defense, and Energy, the Directors of the National Science Foundation and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the intelligence community. --

AMENDMENT NO. 4161
(Purpose: To require biannual reports on foreign persons who contribute to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and their delivery systems, by countries of proliferation concern)
At the end of subtitle C of title X, add the following:

SEC. 1035. BIANNUAL REPORTS ON CONTRIBUTIONS TO PROLIFERATION OF WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION AND DELIVERY SYSTEMS BY COUNTRIES OF PROLIFERATION CONCERN.

(a) REPORTS.--Not later than six months after the date of the enactment of this Act, and every six months thereafter, the President shall submit to Congress a report identifying each foreign person that, during the six-month period ending on the date of such report, made a material contribution to the development by a country of proliferation concern of--
(1) nuclear , biological, or chemical weapons; or
(2) ballistic or cruise missile systems.

(b) FORM OF SUBMITTAL.--
(1) A report under subsection (a) may be submitted in classified form, whether in whole or in part, if the President determines that submittal in that form is advisable.
(2) Any portion of a report under subsection (a) that is submitted in classified form shall be accompanied by an unclassified summary of such portion.

(c) DEFINITIONS.--In this section:
(1) The term ``foreign person'' means--
(A) a natural person that is an alien;
(B) a corporation, business association, partnership, society, trust, or any other nongovernmental entity, organization, or group that is organized under the laws of a foreign country or has its principal place of business in a foreign country;
(C) any foreign governmental entity operating as a business enterprise; and
(D) any successor, subunit, or subsidiary of any entity described in subparagraph (B) or (C).

(2) The term ``country of proliferation concern'' means any country identified by the Director of Central Intelligence as having engaged in the acquisition of dual-use and other technology useful for the development or production of weapons of mass destruction (including nuclear , chemical, and biological weapons) and advanced conventional munitions in the most current report under section 721 of the Combatting Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction Act of 1996 (title VII of Public Law 104-293; 50 U.S.C. 2366), or any successor report on the acquisition by foreign countries of dual-use and other technology useful for the development or production of weapons of mass destruction.

1C) Nulcear Nonproliferation Act of 2002
Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I would like to speak for a few moments on the subject they will clear shortly, the amendment to which I referred and listed the cosponsors, to whom I am extremely gratified for their support. Senator Biden is my principal cosponsor. We hope that this bill will move along and be known as the Domenici-Biden nonproliferation amendment. This amendment supports the nonproliferation program proposed in a bipartisan Senate bill, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Act of 2002.

Today, Senators BIDEN, LUGAR, LANDRIEU, HAGEL, BINGAMAN, MURKOWSKI, CARNAHAN, LINCOLN, and MIKULSKI are cosponsoring this amendment. The end of the Soviet Union in 1991 started a chain of events, which in the long term can lead to vastly improved global stability. Concerns about global confrontations were greatly reduced after that event. But with that event, the Soviet system of guards, guns, and a highly regimented society that had effectively controlled their weapons of mass destruction, along with the materials and expertise to create them, was significantly weakened. Even today, with Russia's economy well on the road to recovery, there's still plenty of room for concerns about the security of these Russian assets.

The tragic events of September 11 brought the United States into the world of international terrorism, a world from which we had been very sheltered. Even with the successes of the subsequent war on terrorism, there's still ample reason for concern that the forces of al-Qaida and other international terrorists are seeking other avenues to disrupt peaceful societies around he world.

In some sense, the events of September 11 set a new gruesome standard against which terrorists may measure their future successes. There should be no question that these groups would use weapons of mass destruction if they could acquire them and deliver them here or to countless other international locations. One of our strongest allies in the current war on terrorism has been the Russian Federation. Assistance from the Russians and other States of the former Soviet Union has been vital in many aspects of the conflict in Afghanistan. President Putin and President Bush have forged a strong working relationship, and the summit meeting was another measure of interest in increased cooperation. As this amendment seeks to strengthen our nonproliferation programs, it provides many options for actions to be conducted through joint partnerships between the Russian Federation and the United States that build on this increased cooperative spirit.

The Nunn-Lugar program of 1991 and the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici legislation of 1996 provided vital support for cooperative programs to reduce the risks that weapons of mass destruction might become available to terrorists. They established a framework for cooperative progress that has served our Nation and the world very well. But despite their successes, accomplished in the face of some enormous challenges, there remain actions that should be taken to further reduce these threats.

This amendment would expand the current nonproliferation programs of the Department of Energy, most of which trace their origins to those original Nunn-Lugar and Nunn-Lugar-Domenici bills. Before I discuss this amendment, I would like to review some our progress to date.

For example, the Nuclear Materials Protection, Control and Accounting program has improved the security of at least one-third of the fissile materials in the former Soviet Union. Comprehensive upgrades have been largely completed on the Russian Navy's stocks of weapons usable materials, with work completed at 10 of their 11 storage sites. Border security is being improved through the Second Line of Defense program. I recall when I participated in the initial ribbon-cutting of this system at Moscow's main airport in 1998. Now this equipment is at over 20 sites in Russia and the Ukraine. Programs to counter ``brain drain'' have moved ahead. The Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention of IPP program has shown excellent progress in recent years in the daunting task of creating commercial opportunities for weapons scientists throughout the former Soviet Union. To date, over $50 million of venture capital has been attracted on several major projects and more than 10,000 technical personnel have been engaged since the program began.

Under IPP, about 100 American businesses are working in Russia, and they've contributed over $100 million of their own funds in support of efforts in which our Government has invested about $70 million. About 400 projects are currently in progress with 100 of those in the closed nuclear cities. American businesses are sharing costs on 132 of those projects. The Nuclear Cities Initiative has one of the most challenging tasks of all the programs--to work cooperatively with the Russians to down-size their vast nuclear weapons complex. The closed nuclear cities that make up this complex have immense technical capabilities, but they have to be, at least in the past, one of the most business-unfriendly places in the world. In 1998, I visited Sarov, the Russian version of Los Alamos. It was a fascinating place where the hospitality of my hosts was most impressive. I still remember visiting their weapons museum and standing beside a 60-megaton bomb that was once destined for our shores. Despite their history, they displayed significant interest in shifting their weapons focus to commercial interests.

Today, there's been real progress in Sarov. For example, there is a signed agreement with the Russians to terminate all weapons construction work at Sarov by 2003. Many commercial ventures are now underway including an Open Computing Center, which provides employment opportunities for former weapons scientists through software development and computer modeling. The HEU deal has largely remained on track, although it's required some help from Congress to keep from derailing. That program has the goal of rendering 500 tons of weapons grade highly enriched uranium un-usable for weapons by converting it into ordinary reactor fuel. To date, 146 tons have been converted, enough for about 6,000 warheads. Despite the successes of the Nunn-Lugar and Nunn-Lugar-Domenici legislation, there remain many actions that should be taken to further reduce these threats. This new amendment expands and strengthens many of the programs established earlier, to further reduce threats to global peace.

It addresses one of the most important realizations from September 11--that the forces of terrorism span the globe. It's now clear that our nuclear nonproliferation programs should extend far beyond the states of the former Soviet Union. This amendment expands the scope of several programs to world-wide coverage. It focuses on threats of a nuclear or radiological type, which largely fall within the expertise of the National Nuclear Security Administration. Just today, the National Research Council released their major report on ``The Role of Science and Technology in Countering Terrorism.'' They present a number of critical recommendations to address threats of nuclear and radiological terrorism. I'm very pleased that the legislative basis for most of their suggestions is in this amendment. This amendment expands programs to include the safety and security of nuclear facilities and radioactive materials around the world, wherever countries are willing to enter into cooperative arrangements for threat reduction. It recognizes that devices that disperse radioactive materials, so-called ``dirty bombs,'' can represent a real threat to modern societies. This is one of the key recommendations of the National Research Council.

Dirty bombs could be used as weapons of mass terror, property contamination, and economic disaster. We need [Page: S6059] GPO's PDF better detection systems for the presence of dirty bombs that are appropriate to the wide range of delivery systems for such a weapon, from trucks to boats to containers. And we need to be far better prepared to deal with the consequences of such an attack. The new legislation includes provisions to accelerate and expand existing programs for disposition of fissile materials. These materials, of course, represent not only a concern with dirty bombs, but also the even larger threat of use in crude nuclear weapons.

It includes a program to accelerate the conversion of highly enriched uranium into forms un-usable for weapons. It addresses one of the major concerns associated with this material that, many years ago, both the United States and the Soviet Union provided HEU to many countries as fuel for research reactors. That fuel represents a proliferation risk today. This accelerated conversion is another of the prime recommendations of the National Research Council. It authorizes new programs for global management of nuclear materials, in cooperation with other nations and with the International Atomic Energy Agency. It recognizes that modern societies use radioactive materials as essential tools in many ways, and offers assistance in providing new controls on the most dangerous of these materials. It suggests that many of the program elements involve international cooperation with the Russian Federation and with other nations. In fact, it recognizes that the global nature of the current threats requires such cooperation, and provides authorizations for the Secretary of Energy to assist the Secretary of State in offering significant help to other nations. We cannot accomplish these programs without such cooperation.

This amendment includes provisions extending the First Responder training programs, originally created under Nunn-Lugar-Domenici. These programs have already made real contributions. In fact, the training provided under this program in New York City helped mitigate the catastrophe there on September 11. That program was authorized for only 5 years in the original legislation, this bill extends that authorization for another 10 years. The amendment requires annual reports demonstrating that all our nonproliferation programs are well coordinated and integrated. The original call for this coordination was in the Nunn-Lugar-Domenici legislation. The report must disclose the extent of coordination and integration between federally funded and private activities. That is very important, because of the excellent work being done by private organizations, like the Nuclear Threat Initiative, that are providing critical assistance toward similar nonproliferation goals.

With this amendment, our programs to counter threats of nuclear and radiological terrorism will be significantly strengthened and risks to the United States and our international partners greatly reduced. The amendment authorizes $15M for a new R&D and demonstration program to address nuclear or radiological (``dirty bombs'') terrorism. Includes new responsibilities in First Responders program. Includes a partnership with Russia and extends assistance to any country in dealing with either stray radioactive sources or with a dirty bomb incident. (Section 3156); Extends the expired authorization for training of First Responders. (Section 3155);

Authorizes $40 million to accelerate the ``blend-down'' of Highly Enriched Uranium. Authorizes new approaches, in addition to the HEU Deal, to increase the rate at which HEU is modified to render it incapable of weapons use. Extends an option to all nations with HEU to receive compensation in return for providing their stocks of HEU now. (Section 3158); Authorizes $5 million to extend MPC&A to the international community and develops options, working jointly with Russia, to accelerate conversion of reactors fueled with HEU. (Section 3157); Encourages the Secretary to finalize an agreement with Russia for plutonium disposition that meets specific criteria. (Section 3159A);

Authorizes $20 million for the Department to work with the international community to develop options for a global program for international safeguards, nuclear safety and proliferation-resistant nuclear technologies. Amount includes $5 million for the Department to increase nuclear safety work related to sabotage protection for nuclear power plants and other nuclear facilities overseas and $10 million, led by DOE/NE, for advanced, proliferation resistant fuel cycles. (Section 3159B); Authorizes $15 million to expand programs supporting the IAEA in strengthening international nuclear safeguards. (Section 3159B);

Authorizes $5 million for assisting nations develop stronger export controls. (Section 3159C); Requires development of a comprehensive ten year plan to develop a sustainable approach to MPC&A in the Russian Federation. (Section 3159D); Requires annual report on coordination and integration of all U.S. nonproliferation activities describing programs, synergies, coordination including with private efforts, opportunities for new joint cooperative programs with foreign countries, and funding requests integrated across all federal agencies. Extends reporting requirement in FY2002 Defense Authorization Act to an annual report. (Section 3159E); and Streamlines contracting by other agencies with DOE labs for anti-terrorism work. Agencies may elect to follow the new procedures or may use standard Work For Others model. (Section 3159F).

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, we simply need a little time on this side to give it consideration. The chairman and I have just commenced a discussion on how we will proceed on the bill today. I would hope in due course we can indicate to the Senator that it will be accepted on both sides.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I have already sent the bill to the desk. It obviously will not be referred to committee unless and until it is cleared by the managers pursuant to the conversation we have had. I would ask that we follow the course I have just indicated. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, does the Senator have a copy of the amendment handy?

Mr. DOMENICI. Surely. I will provide it to the Senator.

Mr. LEVIN. We are pretty sure this is the one we already have.

Mr. DOMENICI. Yes, it is.

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll. The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, we support the amendment on this side. We have cleared it. We are willing to see it adopted by voice vote.

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, we now have clearance on our side. I thank the chairman. We are ready to move forward on the amendment.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be laid aside and the Domenici-Biden amendment be the pending business. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The pending amendment is laid aside. The clerk will report.

The legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from New Mexico [Mr. Domenici], for himself and Mr. Biden, Mr. Lugar, Ms. Landrieu, Mr. Hagel, Mrs. Carnahan, Mr. Murkowski, Mr. Bingaman, Mrs. Lincoln, and Ms. Mikulski, proposes an amendment numbered 4009. (The amendment is printed in today's RECORD under ``Text of Amendments.'')

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I am pleased to join today my good friend and colleague, Senator Domenici, in introducing a vital amendment to the Department of Defense authorization bill to reduce the odds that terrorists or rogue states will acquire the necessary ingredients overseas for nuclear and radiological terrorism. This amendment takes important steps to expand the legal mandate for specific U.S. nuclear nonproliferation programs and lays down a marker on the necessary funding levels. [Page: S6060]

We have every expectation that, before this bill emerges from conference, the additional money will indeed be made available through both the supplemental fiscal year 2002 appropriations and regular fiscal year 2003 appropriations. Senator Domenici is to be both commended and supported for drafting this amendment, and the underlying bill, S. 2545, from which it is derived.

This amendment will lead to greater levels of effort and, I believe, greater levels of achievement in U.S. nuclear nonproliferation programs. For example, it authorizes $40 million to accelerate and expand current international programs to blend down highly enriched uranium (HEU) needed to make nuclear bombs, making it less likely that terrorists or rogue states will get their hands on lethal nuclear materials.

It authorizes $35 million to develop options for a global program for international safeguards and proliferation-resistant technologies to ensure that civilian nuclear reactors in other nations are not illicitly producing significant quantities of weapons-grade material or are vulnerable to terrorist assault.

This amendment also allocates $30 million in funding for a new research, development, and demonstration program to help respond to nuclear or radiological terrorism. For example, the program would fund expanded research into monitors and gauges capable of detecting nuclear and/or radiological materials, for use at border crossings and ports of entry. It will help identify and account for radioactive sources located abroad. And all of these efforts will be carried out in cooperation with Russia and the rest of the international community.

On May 8 Jose Padilla, an American citizen working with al-Qaida, was arrested on the charge of planning to attack the United States with a Radiological Dispersion Device, more commonly called a ``dirty bomb.'' Padilla is only the first person associated with a major terrorist group to have been caught plotting an attack using a radiological weapon. It would be folly to think that he will be either the last or the most competent and successful.

The fact that radiological terror is real and a threat to the nation will come as no great surprise to the Senate. On March 6 the Foreign Relations Committee held a public hearing on the twin threats of nuclear and radiological terrorism. On March 5 we held a classified briefing on the same subject, followed a month later by an even more detailed classified session for all Senators. We assembled the finest scientists from government, the nuclear weapons laboratories, public interest groups and academia to speak of the dangers of dirty bombs. Without exception they told us that there was a real possibility that terrorists could obtain radioactive material and blow it up with a conventional bomb, spreading the material for miles.

But they also agreed on the likely consequences of a radiation attack on an American city.

Despite Attorney General John Ashcroft's statement from Moscow on June 10 that a dirty bomb can ``cause mass death and injury,'' the facts are very different. The Foreign Relations Committee learned that even the worst credible radiological attack will not be catastrophic. Few, if any, Americans will die from the radiation or even experience the symptoms of radiation poisoning. Most, if not all, of the casualties will come from the conventional explosive used to spread the radioactive material.

The bottom line on casualties is: A dirty bomb won't kill very many people. But a dirty bomb could still be an economic crime of the first magnitude. We do not know how to decontaminate large buildings and large areas to the degree that the Environmental Protection Agency mandates. The levels EPA uses in the case of accidents within a laboratory are extraordinary: clean-up must be so complete that out of 1,000 people living on-site 24 hours a day for about 40 years, only 1 additional person would die of cancer. We must begin to examine the radiation protection rules in the light of homeland security in the event of an attack instead of just applying the strict environmental guidelines appropriate to peacetime.

Our witnesses estimated that if a small device, containing only a few curies of cobalt-60 or cesium-137, had been detonated in lower Manhattan on September 10, 2001, and if existing EPA rules were applied to the clean-up, more buildings would have had to be evacuated, razed, and trucked away to low-level radioactive waste dumps than were lost or damaged by the al-Qaida attack of September 11. That is more damage, more financial loss, than was caused when the Twin Towers came down, but with this difference: almost nobody would be killed. At most a few dozen people might get sick. We must do more to prepare for an attack, and also to prevent one. Fortunately, we can, in fact, make such an attack much harder to pull off and much easier to recover from.

Proper preparation for an attack will make a world of difference; we need to begin putting response plans into place and testing them rigorously, both in the field and in table-top exercises. First responders need the tools to act. You cannot see or smell radiation; it can only be detected with special instruments. Small radiation detectors are the size of a pocket pager; larger ones could easily be built into a squad car. A network of detectors in fixed locations could be erected, a few per square mile, in cities such as Washington or Wilmington at a cost of a few million dollars per city. Such sensors might provide early warning of smuggled material on the roads and information on affected areas if somebody brings radiological terror to our cities.

Avoiding panic among the American people will be an important goal of responders, and that will require education. Claims of probable mass casualties from a radiological attack do an injustice to the American people. If repeated over and over again this doom-saying will be a self-fulfilling prophecy spreading panic if an attack actually does happen. Should we be attacked by radiological terrorists, there are very simple things those who have been exposed can do to reduce their chances of being a casualty to nearly zero.

The first is to remain calm. The next is to stay near the point of exposure long enough for nuclear response crews to check for radioactive contamination. And the last, the easiest, is to put your clothes in a plastic bag and then take a good shower and shampoo. Radioactive dust washed off the body is radioactive dust no longer available to do harm to you.

We need to look to the radioactive material itself. Radioactive sources must be kept in responsible hands; but that is difficult because they are used throughout industry, for example, to take x-ray pictures of oil pipelines, and even to tell if a can of soda is properly filled. Radioactive sources are indispensable to modern medicine, where they are used to treat cancer or to perform crucial diagnostic tests. We should not eliminate these sources from our society. We can, however, provide greater protection for such sources.

Before September 11, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission focused its efforts on safety. It assumed that licensed users were responsible users. Since September 11, the Commission has begun to reevaluate its rules with the added assumption that some folks might seek licenses in order to gain access to the material as part of a plot to attack this country or its allies. We need tighter rules, and we also need a bigger Federal effort to track down and secure missing radioactive sources. The fact is that sometimes sources just go astray; they are ``orphaned,'' in the jargon of that business. There are very few places where companies can safely dispose of sources they no longer need.

The Department of Energy ``Off-Site Source Recovery Program'' is supposed to take charge of excess sources. But the administration has cut this vital program from $5.7 million in fiscal year 2001 to a paltry $2.2 million requested for fiscal year 2003. Congress should fix that. Overseas, the greatest threat is likely to come from the poorly guarded radioactive materials from the former Soviet Union. [Page: S6061] Late in 2001, two containers containing enormous amounts of radioactive strontium-90 were found by hunters in the woods of the Republic of Georgia. The sources were so hot that they melted the snow for yards around, leading the three woodsmen to cart them off to warm their tent. By the next morning all were sick with radiation poisoning, including severe burns where they had touched the containers.

Those two radioactive sources were left over from a Soviet program to build compact, powerful, and very portable electrical generators for use in remote areas. Nobody knows where all of the Soviet-produced generators wound up, but wherever they are, they are very dangerous.

Other countries, including Brazil and Mexico, have seen old sources stolen, broken into, melted down to make reinforcing bars and patio furniture, with resulting injuries and deaths to some of their citizens. The United States must work through the International Atomic Energy Agency to ensure the physical protection and accountability of significant radioactive sources throughout the globe. This will require additional U.S. voluntary contributions to the IAEA and may also require additional non-proliferation assistance to the states of the former Soviet Union. After all, that is where the majority of the unaccounted for hot sources are thought to have been made.

I commend the administration for yesterday's announcement of a new joint United States-Russian program to spend $20 million this year to secure and safeguard radiological materials in the former Soviet Union. The program would focus on the radioactive power generators I mentioned earlier, as well as a dozen poorly guarded storage areas for radiological materials. Of course, the former Soviet Union is not the sole overseas repository of radioactive sources attractive to terrorists. But this program may serve as a model for future efforts.

So there is plenty for us to do to lessen the risk and the impact of radiological terrorism. The United States has begun to contribute to the IAEA's Program Against Nuclear Terrorism. Today's amendment is a good step in increasing U.S. assistance in this area.

But I worry far more about something even worse than radiological terrorism. I worry about terrorists building or stealing a real atomic bomb. Our committee learned in chilling detail, in classified session, just how easy it is to make a bomb, given only a comparatively small amount of highly enriched uranium-235. In those sessions Senators were able to see and handle a full-scale mockup, complete in almost every detail, but using inert material instead of uranium. I won't reveal the design; I don't want to give away any information that could be used against us. But building that device is easy. It could be done in a machine shop with ordinary lathes and drills and mills without any need for computer-controlled and export-controlled dual-use equipment. And it would fit in the trunk of a compact car or the back end of a pickup.

Those who attended the briefing also saw a small tactical nuclear weapon, again a full-scale mockup of a real one once in the U.S. inventory. With one of those you don't need a fancy brief-case bomb; you can lift it with one hand. I am not worried about American nuclear weapons going missing, but I am very worried about the tens of thousands built by the Soviet Union. Their tactical nuclear weapons are no bigger than ours, and unless Russia's security for those weapons is a lot better than for its chemical weapons, our colleagues in the Russian Duma should be as worried as I am.

Terrorists with an improvised nuclear device or a stolen weapon could kill tens or hundreds of thousands of people, not a mere handful. A crude nuclear weapon set off at Metro Center would likely kill people near the Capitol complex. A Hiroshima-sized bomb detonated near the White House would leave the Capitol in ruins.

And, talk about a dirty bomb, a small nuclear blast at ground level would spew out hundreds or thousands of times more radioactive material than the biggest dirty bomb imaginable. That much fallout would kill Americans.

We must invest in new technologies to detect bomb-grade uranium and plutonium. That is not an easy task. Neither material is particularly radioactive, at least not compared to cesium-137, cobalt-60, strontium-90 and iridium-192, the isotopes of choice for a dirty bomb. Frankly, we do not know how to detect most bomb-grade fissile material today; certainly not if the weapon is shielded a bit, concealed in a cargo container being whisked through our ports or stashed in the hold of a freight aircraft. None of us knows how long we have to prepare for nuclear terrorism, but we know for sure that the terrorists are shaping their own plans. We, this body, must act sooner rather than later: to provide our responders the tools they need; to secure radioactive and fissile material, both here and abroad, to the greatest extent possible; and to secure our borders against smugglers who would literally flatten our cities.

The Baker-Cutler report card on Department of Energy non-proliferation programs with Russia proposed spending about $30 billion over 8 to 10 years to secure Russia's excess plutonium and bomb-grade uranium, improve security controls on its nuclear materials, and downsize its nuclear complex without leaving its weapons scientists prey to offers from rogue states or terrorists.

Senator Baker and Mr. Cutler called this ``the most urgent unmet national security threat to the United States today.'' In my view, they were absolutely right. Indeed, we must build on their recommendations: by adding support for programs to secure radioactive sources; and by securing any weapons-grade material in nuclear reactors around the world. This amendment Senator Domenici, I, and our fellow co-sponsors are introducing today takes some sensible steps toward these goals. For example, the new research, development, and demonstration program I mentioned earlier will help fund efforts to assist other nations in developing means for the safe disposal of radioactive materials and a proper regulatory framework for licensing control of radioactive sources.

But we all must recognize that this amendment is only a first step to address a threat of this urgency and magnitude. Today we spend $7 or $8 billion a year to guard against the unlikely event of Iran, Iraq, or North Korea putting a nuclear weapon on an intercontinental ballistic missile with a return address, and firing it at us despite the assurance of overwhelming retaliation. We need to show the same sense of urgency in combating the more immediate risk of a more anonymous nuclear weapon without that missile.

In the wake of the World Trade Center attacks, committees of the House and Senate are rightly asking whether more could have been done to detect and prevent that attack and how we can do a better job in the future. What sort of investigation will we have? How will we rebuild our people's trust in government? And what will we tell our children and grandchildren, if we fail to do everything we can to prevent terrorists from doing a hundred times more harm?

Mrs. CARNAHAN. Mr. President, I am pleased to support amendment No. 4009 to the Defense Authorization Act introduced by my colleague from New Mexico. This legislation is a significant step forward in the protection of our Nation from weapons of mass destruction. Since the end of the cold war, the United States has taken considerable steps to reduce the spread of these weapons. Senators Domenici and Lugar, along with former Senator Nunn, have been true visionaries in this field. Because of their efforts, we face less of a threat from the Soviet Union's nuclear legacy than we would have otherwise. The Department of Defense's Cooperative Threat Reduction Program and the related programs at the Department of Energy are truly ``defense by other means.''

While these far-sighted programs have been very successful, they were not designed to address some of the terrorist threats we now face. To address these shortcomings, I introduced the Global Nuclear Security Act. This legislation attacks the problem in three ways. [Page: S6062]

First, it calls on the Departments of Energy, State, and Defense, to develop a plan to encourage countries to adhere to the highest security standards for all nuclear material. Second, it requires the DOE to develop a systematic approach to secure radiological materials outside the United States that could be used to create a so-called ``dirty bomb.'' Third, it directs the DOE, in consultation with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency, to develop plans for reducing the threat of terrorist attacks on nuclear power plants outside the United States. I was pleased to work with Senators LANDRIEU, ROBERTS, LEVIN, and WARNER to incorporate this legislation into the Defense Authorization bill.

Now, I am pleased to join Senator Domenici, and many other colleagues in supporting legislation that will build on the accomplishments of our threat reduction programs and the Global Nuclear Security Act. This amendment would broaden and extend several existing threat reduction programs. Among its many provisions, it calls for the National Nuclear Security Administration to increase research efforts to identify technologies directed at protecting us from weapons of mass destruction. It echoes my call for the NNSA to produce a plan, and to move quickly on that plan, for expanding the nuclear material protection and control program outside of the former Soviet Union, and focusing on protection and control of material that could be used to create ``dirty bombs.''

This amendment also seeks to accelerate the disposal of highly enriched uranium and plutonium found around the world through a variety of methods. Senator Domenici's amendment greatly complements the Global Nuclear Security Act. And the combination of these two pieces of legislation makes this Defense Authorization bill stronger. Not only are we authorizing the Administration to develop strategies for curbing the spread of dangerous materials, but we are mandating swift action to implement these plans.

I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of this amendment. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there further debate on the amendment? The question is on agreeing to the amendment of the Senator from New Mexico. The amendment (No. 4009) was agreed to.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I thank the chairman and ranking member. I believe the cross section of Senators cosponsoring the amendment indicates the broad support for it. There is nothing more important than the United States doing its utmost in this era of nonproliferation, where we do everything we can to make sure that terrorists now, and in the future, have the most difficult time getting their hands on weapons of mass destruction.

There is even a significant American effort in this amendment with reference to ``dirty'' bombs. The Senators and staff who have reviewed it think it gives America and the world a better chance of finding out where the components are before things happen, and sets up guidelines and criteria so that many different discernment points are available but not just in the United States. So after a lot of work on this amendment by many, I thank the Senate for adopting it. I yield the floor.

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I commend and congratulate Senator Domenici. He has been very active in the fight against proliferation. This gives the DOE important additional capability and authority to help us win the war against proliferation. This is a very important contribution to the nonproliferation effort. I was proud to cosponsor this amendment. Again, I commend the Senator from New Mexico.

2A) In Support of Missile Defense
Mr. KYL. Madam President, by way of introduction, my remarks will primarily be in support of an amendment that will be offered by the distinguished ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, the Senator from Virginia, tomorrow to restore missile defense funding that was cut in the Armed Services Committee.

   I wanted to note that this afternoon the President advised both Senator McCain and I that he would be traveling to our home State of Arizona tomorrow--specifically to the town of Show Low which is under threat of this raging wildfire we have all seen and read about--and he graciously offered to allow us to accompany him on that trip. But, obviously, the importance of this Defense authorization bill--specifically, the votes we will have tomorrow, including an effort to restore funding for the missile defense portion of the bill--requires that we remain.

   I am going to speak to the issue that will involve his visit to Arizona tomorrow, why these raging wildfires don't need to continue to devastate our country, what we can do about it, and what we need to do about it as a country at the conclusion of my remarks on the Defense bill. I will address my comments first to this bill which is before the Senate, and which we will be considering this week.

   It seems to me that there is a strange disconnect between recent developments in the world and some of the contents of the bill that we are considering.

   For example, in early May, Iran--newly dubbed by the State Department as the No. 1 terrorist nation in the

   world--conducted a successful test of its 800-plus-mile-range Shahab III missile. There are some reports that Iran is now set to begin domestic production of the Shahab III which will be able to reach Israel, as well as U.S. troops deployed in the Middle East and South Asia.

   On May 7, the Associated Press, citing an administration official, reported that Iran is continuing the development of a longer range missile, the Shahab IV, with an estimated range of 1,200 to 1,800 miles. The Shahab IV will be able to reach deep into Europe.

   That means that the fanatical mullahs in Tehran will be able to put a multitude of U.S. allies and our troops within striking distance of their missiles and weapons of mass destruction.

   We have also just witnessed one of the scariest standoffs in recent decades with India and Pakistan angrily pointing their nuclear-tipped missiles at each other.

   These developments represent a dramatic increase in the worldwide missile threat.

   You might think that the United States would therefore want to accelerate its effort to build a defense against such weapons. But the bill before us today would seriously hamper our ability to do exactly that. This is not something that the American people will stand for.

   This is why I believe that tomorrow it is incumbent upon the Members of this body to listen to their constituents, to listen to the President of the United States, to look at the events around the world, and to reconnect our policy here in the Senate to the realities of the world around us.

   This bill makes very deep and damaging cuts to the President's proposed budget for missile defense. Unless remedied, those cuts will seriously limit our ability to end our current--and let me say our unacceptable--vulnerabilities to ballistic missile attack.

   As I noted, the threat from ballistic missiles continues to grow.

   In addition to the two examples I mentioned, consider this: Today, there are nearly three dozen countries that either have or are developing ballistic missiles of increasing range and sophistication. That includes Iran's fellow ``axis of evil'' partners--or members, I should say--Iraq and North Korea, as well as the terrorist regimes of Syria and Libya.

   Let us take a look at some of these developments, which, unless indicated otherwise, are taken straight from the December 2001 National Intelligence Estimate on Foreign Ballistic Missiles. That is the estimate of our intelligence community about this threat.

   North Korea, despite the moratorium on flight testing that it is supposedly adhering to, continues its development of long-range missiles.

   According to press accounts and administration officials, North Korea has recently conducted rocket motor tests of these missiles.

   In fact, North Korea's Taepo Dong 2 missile, which is capable of reaching the United States with a nuclear-weapon-sized payload, may now be ready for flight testing.

   As to Iraq, despite U.N. sanctions, Baghdad has been able to maintain the infrastructure and expertise necessary to develop longer range missiles.

   Its Al-Samoud missile, with a 60 to 90-mile range, probably will be deployed soon.

   And Iraq retains a covert force of scud-variant missiles, launchers, and conventional, chemical, and biological warheads.

   Not to forget about China, the intelligence community assesses that it could begin deploying its 5,000-mile-range DF-31 missile during the first half of this decade. That means essentially any time now. China's even longer range mobile missile, the DF-41, could be deployed in the latter half of the decade.

   China also maintains a robust force of medium-range CSS-5 missiles which can reach our troops in Japan and Korea.

   Of course, China continues to add to its arsenal of short-range missiles which already number in the several hundreds and are deployed opposite Taiwan.

   According to the intelligence community--and I am quoting now--

   China's leaders calculate that conventionally armed ballistic missiles add a potent new dimension to Chinese military capabilities, and they are committed to continue fielding them at a rapid pace. Beijing's growing short-range ballistic missile force provides China with a military capability that avoids the political and practical constraints associated with the use of nuclear-armed missiles. The latest Chinese short-range ballistic missiles provide a survivable and effective conventional strike force and expand conventional ballistic missile coverage.

   Even the terrorists are getting into the act. According to a variety of news sources, some of which have quoted U.S. and Israeli officials, Iran and Syria have supplied Lebanon's Hezbollah terrorist organization with Fajr-5 missiles, which, at 40 to 50 miles, can reach deeper into Israel than any rockets Hezbollah has fired so far. One press account stated further that Hezbollah is assembling chemical warheads for these missiles.

   These developments, among others, led to the following conclusions in the December 2001 National Intelligence Estimate:

   One, short- and medium-range ballistic missiles, particularly if armed with weapons of mass destruction, already pose a significant threat overseas to U.S. interests, military forces, and allies.

   Two, proliferation of ballistic-missile-related technologies, materials, and expertise--especially by Russian, Chinese, and North Korean entities--has enabled emerging missile states to accelerate development timelines for their missile programs.

   In other words, this is making the point that instead of having to always indigenously develop a missile capability, a country can now buy these literally readymade missiles from countries such as China, North Korea, and Russia.

   Three, most intelligence community agencies project that,

   before 2015, the United States most likely will face ICBM threats from North Korea and Iran, and possibly from Iraq, as well as from the existing ICBM forces of China and, of course, Russia.

   Four, the probability that a missile with a weapon of mass destruction will be used against U.S. forces or interests is higher today than during most of the cold war, and will continue to grow as the capabilities of potential adversaries mature.

   After September 11, we dare not willfully remain vulnerable to these threats. But that is essentially the impact of the partisan cuts that were made to this bill when it was before the Armed Services Committee.

   Of course, there are those who suggest that the September 11 attacks demonstrated that the major threat to

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   The new types of threats we face from terrorists and the rogue regimes that support them cannot be dealt with solely through traditional deterrence. President Bush was right when he recently remarked at West Point:

   Deterrence--the promise of massive retaliation against nations--means nothing against shadowy terrorist networks with no nation or citizens to defend.

   In addition, I make this point. I do not think the majority of the Iranian or Iraqi people or Syrian people detest the United States or wish to attack us with nuclear weapons.

   If tyrants like Saddam Hussein, who dictatorially rule some of those countries, were to use a weapon of mass destruction against our ally Israel, or even against U.S. troops abroad, I am not sure the President of the United States, in those circumstances, would want to retaliate with a nuclear weapon in the middle of Baghdad, let's say, or some other Iraqi city.

   Clearly, we would rain massive retaliation upon Saddam Hussein, but we would have to think very carefully about a nuclear deterrent in a situation such as that.

   So traditional deterrence may or may not be an appropriate response to a terrorist attack. The bottom line is, we are not always dealing with rational actors. To depend on nuclear deterrence alone with a dictator like Saddam Hussein, who, remember, used chemical weapons against his own people, or a terrorist like Osama bin Laden would be to place American lives in the hands of madmen. That, itself, is mad when we have the ability to defend against such an attack.

   That alternative, of course, is to develop and deploy missile defenses. They will add to our options in terms of a crisis. Defenses against missiles will help the United States avoid being frozen into inaction by the threat of a missile attack.

   This is the threat of blackmail: A country that acquires a nuclear weapon and the ballistic missile capability to deliver it will be in a much stronger position to dictate what it wants around the world--or to prevent the United States from acting--than one that does not. It reduces our options significantly.

   Just imagine the impact on our decision to go to war against Saddam Hussein in 1991 had he been able to threaten the United States or our allies with nuclear missiles. Missile defense will also reduce the incentives for proliferation by devaluing offensive missiles. If a rogue actor views missiles as likely to be effective because of our lack of defenses, they will be developed. If, on the other hand, we have defenses, then they will obviously be less inclined to spend as much time or money trying to acquire it.

   Finally, and perhaps most important of all, in the worst case scenario, we will save American lives with missile defense.

   So we should not be fooled by the fact that the bill still authorizes several billion dollars for something called missile defense. Make no mistake that the cuts in this bill are very carefully designed to gut the administration's plans to protect the American people from missiles.

   If one had wanted to leave intact a program that looked very much like missile defense, but very surgically gutted the key components of it, one could not have done better than the language and the money that comes out of the Armed Services Committee bill.

   Allow me to describe some of the features of the President's new approach. We are very much aware that the President has decided that we need to transform our military. And the President has proposed an aggressive overhaul of not only the missile defense program but other programs from the previous administration.

   Let me describe some of the features of this transformational approach: First, a single, integrated architecture to command and control all of the various components of a missile defense system. What this does is to move us from the old concept of several unlinked systems to one overarching system composed of several integrated components or elements, as they are now called. This system removes the need for each element to do everything and, instead, distributes the basic tasks--such as launch detection, tracking, and battle management--across the entire system.

   So instead of having three or four specific components that do everything, you have several ways of attacking the problem, all linked together; therefore, they are much more effective in their overall ability to detect, track, and destroy an enemy missile.

   Secondly, multilayered defenses capable of intercepting missiles in all phases of flight, including the boost, midcourse, and terminal phases is an element of the President's transformation plan. The obvious benefits of this feature is that it will give us several shots, if necessary, to knock down a missile after it has been launched.

   The point is, we do not have very much time, when a missile has been launched against us, to make a decision to launch a counterattack. By the time we do that, the missile could well be coming down on top of us. We need the ability to have multilayered defenses which can be effective in the boost phase, as the offending missile is going up, which can try to attack it in midcourse, and, as a last resort, as it is barreling down on us at something like 17,000 miles an hour.

   But if you only rely on that last system, you are not going to get multiple shots. You are going to get one shot. And it may not always do the trick. In that case, you have lost.

   Third, the ability to deploy defenses rapidly in the event of an emergency is one of the critical components of the President's plan. To accommodate these goals and others, the administration reformed the Missile Defense Agency and gave it wide latitude to pursue innovative approaches rather than the former approach which was to have a long-term project of design and research and then development and then deployment.

   The problem is that the bill on the floor today takes dead aim at each of these worthy efforts. The system's integration and command and control accounts, the brains of the whole system, if you will, are reduced in funding by two-thirds. That is gutting the program. To cut the funding by two-thirds, literally, imagine the human body. It looks just like it did after the operation except for one thing: You have taken out the brain. It is not going to work very well. That is the first damage that was done to the President's program as a result of Armed Services Committee action.

   Programs to intercept missiles in the boost phase, particularly those employing new basing modes and technologies, are virtually wiped out. Funding for 10 THAAD test missiles, which would be deployed in an emergency, is eliminated, and the Missile Defense Agency staff is cut by two-thirds. Essentially what the bill leaves us is the old piecemeal approach, with many of the most promising technologies starved of funding and a variety of impediments created to early deployment of the President's proposed system.

   It is quite interesting that just as these cuts were being made, cuts that will wreck the Bush administration's approach to protecting the American people from missiles, the ABM Treaty lapsed into history on June 13. The bill is an attempt to revive the spirit of that treaty by those who have never accepted President Bush's decision to opt out of it. If this is the case, they are in dwindling company.

   A year ago, the anti-missile defense, pro-ABM Treaty crowd created much hubbub over how any decision to renounce the ABM Treaty would supposedly alienate our allies, cause a major rift with Russia, and spark an arms race. It was going to be a disaster. Well, as it turns out, none of those dire predictions came true. Let's have a look.

   Have we alienated our allies? As of last count, 12 of our 19 NATO allies have contributed troops to our campaign in Afghanistan, 7 countries have sent their troops into combat alongside

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   Did it cause a rift with Russia? No. Russia has just entered into a new partnership with NATO, and President Bush just signed a communique with President Putin of Russia in May, committing both sides to cooperation on a host of issues, including, of all things, missile defense.

   How about a new arms race? No, again. President Bush also signed a treaty with Russia under which both sides intend to reduce strategic nuclear warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200. So the doomsayers were wrong. It is true that Russia and many European countries might have preferred that President Bush not renounce the ABM Treaty, but it seems these countries were not quite as wedded to this outmoded document as some of its Americans supporters.

   The ABM Treaty, as the cold war that gave birth to it, is gone. Russia and the United States, despite a number of disagreements and interests that don't always intersect, have moved beyond enmity toward a new, more cooperative relationship, and at the same time we have entered into a new

   area in international relations in which the threats to this Nation are increasingly complex and difficult to predict.

   So the President expended a great deal of energy and capital in working with our allies and Russia to terminate the cold war and its documentation in the form of the ABM Treaty, to enter into new agreements with Russia, to demonstrate we are friends, not enemies. In order to be able to pivot and address the new threats that face us, the threats from these Third World rogue powers, he proposes a national missile defense.

   Having gone to all of that trouble--and I shouldn't characterize it as trouble so much as devoting a great deal of America's prestige and commitment to this effort--we now have opponents in the Senate who would go right back to a missile defense of the kind that would be authorized by the ABM Treaty, which is to say virtually none at all. That is wrong, very wrong.

   The traditional cold-war-style deterrence is not going to deal with the threats we face today. It is time for ABM Treaty supporters who have stood in the way of missile defense for nearly 30 years to recognize this new reality. This reality was brought home with horrible abruptness on September 11. Just imagine if that day were to repeat itself but this time with a ballistic missile armed with a nuclear or chemical or biological warhead. The only responsible course of action to deal with that possibility is to proceed with the most robust program of missile defense development we can muster. That is what the President proposed.

   The Pentagon's approach to missile defense is exactly that. It is an aggressive, forward-looking plan to provide the American people with protection against ballistic missiles at the earliest possible date. Indeed, this body overwhelmingly voted to make such a plan U.S. policy in the 1999 Missile Defense Act.

   We have to fund the plan, and we can't allow those who oppose missile defense to go in and surgically remove the key components of the President's program in order to effectively defeat missile defense while at the same time arguing that they have left the program intact. It does no good to spend $5 or $6 billion on a program without a brain, on a program that can't communicate among its independent parts, and on a program that does not begin the transformational policy the President has outlined.

   I am hopeful that when we vote on the amendment of the Senator from Virginia tomorrow, which restores the funding that was proposed by the President, the Senate will overwhelmingly stand with the President and with the American people, with common sense, to be able to defend the American people against ballistic missile attack. The issue is literally that stark.

   If we support the committee action, while people can claim that they still support missile defense, the reality will be that that program cannot go forward because it has effectively been denuded by the cuts that have been made. We have to support the amendment of the Senator from Virginia.

   I wanted to talk about that tonight because I am not sure that tomorrow I will be able to engage in the debate prior to the vote. As I said, it is a vote which we must be here to cast, notwithstanding a devastating tragedy occurring in my home State.

   Since I believe it is the desire of the majority to terminate my remarks on the Defense authorization bill and the Warner amendment so that we can go into morning business for a little bit and I can discuss that subject separately, I ask unanimous consent that a Wall Street Journal editorial of June 17, 2002, be printed in the RECORD on the Defense authorization bill.

   There being no objection, the editorial was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:

   Don't Go Wobbly

   The crisis in the Indian subcontinent is currently engaging the diplomatic activity of all the great powers. Rightly so. The calamity a nuclear exchange could bring is truly dreadful to contemplate.

   We can expect that this somber fact alone will exercise an effective restraint on both sides. But we cannot assume that the nuclear deterrent effect is the same in the Cold War and post-Cold War worlds. This reflection has implications far beyond the subcontinent. It goes to the heart of our priorities since the events of Sept. 11.

   UNTOLD DAMAGE

   During most of my political lifetime the two superpowers, the U.S. and the Soviet Union, had massive nuclear arsenals, even a small proportion of which would have inflicted untold damage. But this knowledge imposed discipline on the aggressive expansionism of the Soviets and made for a kind of stability. There were, in fact, well-understood limits on the extent to which either side would directly challenge the other's interests. The exceptions--like the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962--only proved the rule.

   The nuclear deterrent did not prevent all war; the conflicts in South East Asia show that. But the West's possession of a credible nuclear deterrent prevented nuclear war. It also prevented conventional war in the Alliance's most vulnerable sector--Europe. The calculation behind the deterrent was not completely fail-safe. But the rules were clear, the psychology understood and each side's sticking points known.

   One cannot say the same with India and Pakistan. The conflicting claims on Kashmir are compounded by lack of experience in coping with the temptations offered by their own nuclear capabilities. President Clinton's attempt four years ago to persuade the hostile neighbors to relinquish their nuclear status was doomed to failure. The task of President Bush and his envoys now is both more complex and more realistic: to remind New Delhi and Islamabad that war, even a victorious conventional war, would in the long run damage their nations' interests more than a messy and unsatisfactory peace. The dangers of a nuclear escalation only make that more true.

   But this crisis also holds wider lessons for us. The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction has fundamentally changed the world in which we and our children will live. India's and Pakistan's nuclear arsenals have given them the power to inflict huge destruction. But neither is a rogue state. India is a democracy. Pakistan is not, but it has a ruler who has demonstrated his willingness to side with democracies against terror. Both are basically friendly to the West.

   Proliferation of WMD offers far more menacing risks when those weapons are in the hands of the West's sworn enemies. We have to assume that if those who hate us are confident that they can threaten us or our allies by this means they will do so. The threat alone could transform the West's ability to intervene in order to protect its interests or to undertake humanitarian missions. In some cases we must expect the rogue states to try to go beyond mere threat.

   It is still true that any such action would be irrational. There can be no doubt that response to the use of WMD against us would be massive--probably nuclear. Yet even this awesome prospect might not deter a fanatic who cared nothing for his own country or safety. We already see such a mentality at work in the suicide bombers. At the rate at which nuclear, chemical and biological weaponry and missile technology have been proliferating we must expect that at some point these weapons will be used.

   The is quite simply the greatest challenge of our times. We must rise to it.

   The right strategy has been clearly enunciated by President Bush. America must speedily build a ballistic missile defense system which will afford protection against missiles launched from anywhere in the globe. The president has made progress in winning the argument for this policy. He deserves the fullest cooperation from all who stand to gain from it, including Britain.

   We also have to isolate rogue states that are seeking to develop (or have developed) WMD, and eliminate the threat they pose. Sometimes this will be possible by a mixture of diplomatic sticks and carrots. Iran for example, was quite rightly classed by the president as part of the ``axis of evil.'' It has a missile program which poses a threat to

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   North Korea, on the other hand, is beyond reform. Diplomacy has little value. Indeed, North Korea has already been appeased too much. It is in the grip of a psychotic Stalinist regime whose rule is sustained by terror and bankrolled by those who buy its missiles. It is one of the few states that could launch an unprovoked nuclear strike. The regime must go, and I fear that it may not go peacefully.

   Between Iran on the one hand and North Korea on the other, the list of rogue states will be the subject of continuing revision and debate. And in each case there will be a mix of policies appropriate to achieve our goal of removing the threat which these states pose.

   That is also true of Iraq. I have detected a certain amount of wobbling about the need to remove Saddam Hussein--though not from President Bush. It is not surprising, given the hostility of many allies to this venture, that some in Washington may be having second thoughts. It is, of course, right that those who have the duty to weigh up the risks of particular courses of action should give their advice--though they would be better to direct their counsel to the president not the press. But in any case, as somebody once said, this is no time to go wobbly.

   Saddam must go. His continued survival after comprehensively losing the Gulf War had done untold damage to the West's standing in a region where the only forgivable sin is weakness. His flouting of the terms on which hostilities ceased has made a laughingstock of the international community. His appalling mistreatment of his own countrymen continues unabated. It is clear to anyone willing to face reality that the only reason Saddam took the risk of refusing to submit his activities to U.N. inspectors was that he is exerting every muscle to build WMD. We do not know exactly what stage that has reached. But to allow this process to continue because the risks of action to arrest it seem too great would be foolish in the extreme.

   COERCIVE MEASURES

   I do not claim to know the precise balance of coercive measures required now to remove Saddam: only those with access to the best intelligence can assess that. A major deployment of ground forces as well as sustained air strikes will probably be required. And it will be essential that internal groups opposed to Saddam be mobilized and assisted. No one pretends that an equivalent of the Afghan Northern Alliance is available. But I suspect that once the aura of terror surrounding the Iraqi regime is dispelled we may be astonished by the number of opponents who come forward to help finish the job.

   Finally, a warning: We should not try now to predetermine the final outcome for a post-Saddam Iraq. One of the errors in 1991 was an exaggerated fear of the possible breakup of Iraq if the measures required to topple Saddam were taken. The Kirds and Shiites have since endured years of murderous repression as a result. In great strategic questions it is possible to be too clever. We need to concentrate on what we can achieve with the instruments at hand, and then press ahead boldly with the task before us. That will be quite taxing enough.

   Mr. KYL. Madam President, that terminates my remarks on the bill. May I inquire of the Chair, is it correct that at the conclusion of my remarks the Chair was prepared to put the Senate into a period of morning business?

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.

   The Senate is in morning business.

2B) National Defense Authorization Debate
Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I have been following the proceedings over the last day or so with increasing concern. As we said last week, we all know that this legislation has to be completed this week. I had hoped, because of the agreement we were able to reach among leadership last week, that we would table nonrelevant amendments, that we would be able to move expeditiously with amendments on those issues for which there was an interest, and that we would accommodate these amendments in a way that would allow us to move the consideration of this bill along successfully. I guess I was overly optimistic.

   Frankly, I am very disappointed, in spite of that agreement, in spite of the efforts we have made to encourage Senators to come to the floor, and in spite of the fact that we know there is so much that still needs to be done, that we are at a procedural impasse.

   I, frankly, know of no other recourse but to file cloture. That is the only way we can be absolutely certain we will complete our work before the end of this week. I have indicated that lament to the Republican leader.

   I have noted with some concern to our managers that unless we do, I see no really practical way we can complete our work and perhaps accommodate other issues and other needs legislatively before the end of this week and before the Fourth of July recess.

   Frankly, I don't know what the impasse is now. I thought we had reached an agreement on one of the amendments. At the very last minute, it appeared that in spite of that agreement there was opposition on the other side. And that precluded the opportunity to move forward on at least one of these issues.

   CLOTURE MOTION

   Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I send a cloture motion to the desk.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion have been presented under rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.

   The legislative clerk read as follows:

   Cloture Motion

   We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, hereby move to bring to a close the debate on S. 2514, the Defense authorization bill:
Harry Reid, Jon Corzine, Richard Durbin, Tom Harkin, Carl Levin, Mary Landrieu, Tom Carper, Ben Nelson, Ron Wyden, Daniel Akaka, Debbie Stabenow, Evan Bayh, Maria Cantwell, Herb Kohl, John Edwards, Jeff Bingaman, Joseph Lieberman.

   Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I will indicate to all colleagues that we will not leave this week until this bill has been voted on and final passage. I hope that won't be the last piece of legislative work we do. I hope we will even be able to work on a couple of the nominations. There are a number of issues on the Executive Calendar that could be addressed. But we can't do anything until we have completed our work here.

   Senators should be aware that there will be a cloture vote on Thursday morning. That will then trigger a 30-hour period within which this work must be completed so that we have a guarantee that at least before Friday afternoon the legislative time will have run out and we will have an opportunity to vote on final passage. I regret that I have to do this, but I see no other recourse.

   I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

   The legislative clerk proceeded to call the role.

   Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

   Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I yield myself time under leader time to respond to the action just taken by Senator Daschle. Having been in his position, I certainly understand why he is doing that. I think it is the right thing to do in this case.

   We clearly need to move this Defense authorization bill forward, as we did the supplemental. We need to get an agreement on that and provide additional funds for defense and homeland security.

   We also need to get completion of the Defense authorization bill before we leave for the Fourth of July recess.

   How could we celebrate the freedom of the country without having done our work on the Defense bill in view of all that we are dealing with at home and abroad?

   So I think the majority leader was in his rights, and I would plan to support his cloture motion unless we can come up with some agreement that would allow us to save time by vitiating that. But I pledge my continued support to try to get this bill done in an orderly fashion at a reasonable hour, hopefully Thursday afternoon or early or late Thursday evening.

   I just want to be on record that I understand why he is doing it, and I think it is the right thing, all things considered, at this time.

   I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

   The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

   Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

   Mr. DASCHLE. Mr. President, in light of this development, it is safe to announce there will be no more rollcall votes for the remainder of the day.

   I yield the floor. And if no none is seeking the floor, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

   The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

   Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

   Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I will give a few remarks. If anyone needs the floor, I will be glad to yield.

   I think it is important for us to recognize, as we go forward with this new national missile defense system, that we are moving into a new era.

   We had the ABM Treaty in 1972 that was the cornerstone of a mutual assured destruction strategy between the United States and the Soviet Union. We both agreed we would not launch missiles against one another and we would not, under the treaty, explicitly build an antimissile defense system. Not one of us would, leaving each other vulnerable to one another.

   The treaty only has six or seven pages. It is in the appendix of this book that I have in the Chamber. The reason I want to share it is because a lot of people wondered why, 6 months ago, President Bush chose to get out of the treaty. And that took effect just a few days ago when the 6 months ran from the notice he gave in December.

   This treaty really kept us from defending ourselves. In the first article it says:

   Each Party undertakes not to deploy ABM systems for a defense of the territory of its country and not to provide a base for such a defense, and not to deploy ABM systems for defense of an individual region. .....

   We basically said we could not deploy one. It says that again in several places here.

   Article V says--and this was the conflict we were having, the problems we were having:

   Each Party undertakes not to develop, test, or deploy ABM systems or components which are sea-based, air-based, space-based, or mobile land-based.

   Much of our new scientific development in recent years indicates that sea-based, air-based, space-based has the capacity to help us protect our homeland from missile attack.

   Earlier this afternoon I read some quotes from the vice admiral in charge of the Defense Intelligence Agency in which he said China was developing a mobile-based IBM system. China was not party to the treaty; neither was Korea, neither was Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. They were not a party to the treaty. All those countries are striving to develop a missile system.

   China, according to the intelligence report, is, in fact, developing a mobile land-based system. According to this treaty we had with the Soviet Union--a country that no longer exists--that treaty prohibited us from doing that or having a sea-based or an air-based system. This was getting really out of

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   We are moving into an age where 16 countries have a missile system. Some of those are virulent rogue nations that desire us harm. We had this treaty that kept us from preparing a defense to that.

   Some people forgot, also, that under the treaty there were some exceptions. We chose one route and the Soviet Union chose another one, which was to build a national missile defense around Moscow. They, in fact, deployed a missile defense system, under their option, around Moscow. But we were prohibited from doing that.

   President Bush took a lot of grief. You remember it. They said he was acting unilaterally. And the Socialist left in Europe went up in arms that the United States should not get out of this treaty. Some in Russia said it was a mistake, and they objected. But the truth is, I think they were just negotiating with us for a good deal.

   President Bush was steadfast. He stayed the course. The National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was consistent; she never backed off. They made clear that at this point in history the mutual assured destruction that existed between us and the Soviet Union was out of date. We now hope to have in Russia a friend, not an enemy. It was an entirely different nation. What our threat was--and we learned on September 11 just how real this was--was from rogue nations. And we ought to be able to begin to prepare as to how to defend ourselves from that.

   In 1999, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld chaired a commission to study the threat posed to the United States from ballistic missile attack. That was a bipartisan commission. And they studied the issue intensely. The commission unanimously voted that the United States was facing a threat from missile attack by other nations. They unanimously agreed that the threat was coming much quicker than had been predicted earlier, and that by the year 2005 we could be subject to missile attack from other nations.

   So that is why the Nation decided, in 1999, to go forward. It was a dramatic vote in this Senate when we voted 97 to 3, with Senator THAD COCHRAN, who spoke earlier this afternoon, being the prime proponent of the legislation. But in addition

   to Senator Cochran, one of his prime cosponsors was Senator Lieberman, the Democratic Vice Presidential candidate last year, and one of the leading senior members of the Armed Services Committee. They proposed the language that, in 1999, stated we would deploy a national missile defense system as soon as technologically feasible.

   We made that decision. We funded it. President Clinton proposed a $5.3 billion budget for national missile defense to carry out that objective.

   President Bush, during the campaign, said he believed we ought to be moving more aggressively, that the threat was more real than some thought. He wanted to step up the pace, and he did do that. He proposed an increase when he became President of about $2.5 billion over the $5.3 billion, making it a $7.7 billion national missile defense budget. That was passed by this body. We had a dispute in committee, and on a party-line vote the increase was not backed in the committee. But when we got to the floor, the full amount was affirmed on voting.

   So this year the President asked for a little bit less. He asked for a $7.6 billion or so expenditure for national missile defense. He did not ask for an increase over last year but actually asked for a small reduction as compared to last year's expenditure. But, again, that was one issue that we disputed in the Armed Services Committee, and on a straight--unfortunately, I thought--party-line vote, $800 million was taken out of the national missile defense fund.

   It was taken out in a way that General Kadish, who has managed this program with integrity and skill and determination, said would damage the program significantly.

   I don't believe we ought to allow that to stand. I believe the full Senate needs to review it and replace that money. Let's do what the President asked. Let's give him the money he requested. Let's keep this plan to build a national missile defense that will include sea-based, mobile land-based, multiple land-based, and space-based, if appropriate, capabilities that will allow us to hit the incoming missiles in their launch phase, midphase, and in the terminal phase, all of which we have the capability to do.

   The tests that have been running have been successful. We have been able to have head-to-head collision, bullet-hitting-bullet, high-over-the-ocean, smashing and destroying missiles. We are going to continue to test it under the most rigorous conditions. I believe this process we are undergoing will be successful, and we will prove that we have the capability to destroy incoming missiles even with decoys, even under the most hostile conditions. That is what we ought to do.

   The total price of it, the $7.6 billion the President asked, out of a $386 billion defense budget that we are putting up this year, is reasonable and appropriate. It represents not a step to cold war but a step to a new, positive relationship, away from mutually assured destruction, away from the hostility we had with the Soviet Union for so long, to a new open day in which we are actively engaged in the world, but a day in which we don't have rogue nations being able to intimidate us, being able to intimidate the President, being able to threaten our country with attack that would have to cause him to pause. It would have to affect our defense policy, if that were to be the case.

   I believe this will move us away from it, give us freedom to act in our just national interest. I urge the Senate to move forward with approval of our President's budget and the Warner amendment.

   I yield the floor.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. CANTWELL). The Senator from Nevada.

   Mr. REID. Madam President, I know my friend from Nebraska, the distinguished Senator, is here. I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Nebraska, Mr. Hagel, be allowed to make a statement on the underlying bill, that during that period of time there would be no amendments offered to the bill; following the statement of the Senator from Nebraska, the Senate then proceed to a period of morning business for the rest of the evening.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

   The Senator from Nebraska.

   Mr. HAGEL. I thank my distinguished colleague and friend, the senior Senator from Nevada.

   I rise today in support of the Warner amendment, an amendment that will restore the $814 million cut from the President's request for missile defense funding. Last December, President Bush made the decision to withdraw the United States from the constraints of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972, the ABM Treaty. That treaty went out of existence on June 13. The United States is no longer constrained by cold-war-era treaty requirements.

   I supported President Bush's actions to withdraw the United States from the ABM Treaty, which I believe demonstrates his commitment to America's defense. The ABM Treaty was an important treaty. It defined the strategic policy of our Nation and defined the strategic nuclear policy of an era because at that time in 1972, the ABM Treaty was signed by two countries: the Soviet Union and the United States, the only two countries that had the capacity to launch all out nuclear war.

   The world has changed--the world is dynamic--since the ABM Treaty was signed, and the policy of mutually assured destruction that formed the cornerstone of our nuclear deterrent policy is gone.

   Now, as September 11 has made brutally clear, we face varied threats from terrorists, individuals, nations, organizations, and those that support them. These threats, these challenges come in many forms. Currently, 12 nations have nuclear weapons programs; 28 nations have ballistic missiles; 13 nations have biological weapons; and 16 nations have chemical weapons.

   These new realities mean we must place a greater emphasis on defense--all forms of defense. Unfortunately, the defense

   authorization bill reported out of the Senate Armed Services Committee takes a step backwards with regard to missile defense.

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   The $814 million cut will have a profound effect on U.S. efforts to continue research and important development and eventually deploy an effective missile defense system.

   In addition to the proposed cuts in research and testing, nearly 70 percent of the Missile Defense Agency's civilian jobs and related costs could be eliminated if the current legislation we are debating is enacted. These cuts would severely hamper the Missile Defense Agency's ability to conduct day-to-day business. That means tests. That means research. That means development. That means a better understanding of the integration of these new defense capabilities into our overall national security system.

   This is very important. It isn't one test. It is not one program. It is not one system. It is an integration of all these strategic balances that now become the dynamic of our national security system: Offensive weapons, now defensive capabilities to guard against not just ballistic missiles but tactical missiles, nuclear, biological, weapons that can be delivered and delivered anywhere in this country.

   We seek a broad array of research, development, and testing activities to yield a system as soon as feasible, not any system but a relevant, realistic system that in fact has the capability to defend this country and our allies. This is not one monolithic umbrella over just this country. Our deployed forces overseas, large groupings of our deployed forces all over the globe, must be protected. Our friends and allies rely on the United States. This is a large, profound, critically important project. It cannot be accomplished, defined in a year or 2 years. But in the interest of our country and its future security, it is quite clear that we need a national missile defense system.

   The Armed Services Committee's actions in the bill they reported out of committee would hamper this objective. If the current Senate version of the missile defense budget were to stand, Secretary Rumsfeld would recommend that the President veto this legislation.

   It is important to note how missile defense interconnects with our broader security and strategic policies. In February, I visited the U.S. Strategic Command in Bellevue, NB, the headquarters of our military nuclear strategy.

   At 1 o'clock tomorrow afternoon, Secretary Rumsfeld will announce that Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska will become the new headquarters for a merged SPACECOM and STRATCOM facility with new responsibilities

   to face the new challenges and threats of our day.

   Missile defense will be part of that new merged command and will bring Space Command and Strategic Command together. When I was at Offutt Air Force Base earlier this year, I was briefed on how defense policy was moving beyond the cold war nuclear triad of missiles, bombers, and submarines.

   One leg of the new triad would consist of our old nuclear capability, but it would be supplemented with both conventional military superiority and an effective missile defense system--integrating the systems. In forging this new triad, the United States could significantly reduce our nuclear arsenal, while at the same time protecting our country, our troops abroad, and our allies from limited missile threats and possible missile blackmail from rogue regimes, terrorists, and other nations.

   Today's New York Times ran a story discussing a course that this transformation could take. It described a possible new Unified Combatant Command that could ``combine the military network that warns of missile attacks with its force that can fire nuclear and nonnuclear weapons at suspected nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons sites around the world.''

   We are in the process of making this new strategic framework a reality. It is our highest responsibility--the security of this Nation, the security of our men and women around the world, whose only objective is the security of this Nation. We have a responsibility to our allies. We must recognize that the threats facing our Nation are changing, and we must restructure, reorganize, and adapt to these new dangerous threats.

   Missile defense will play a significant role in protecting our country, our allies, and our deployed forces. I might say, isn't it interesting that under President Putin, the Russians are working closely with our defense establishment to work through these new mutually beneficial strategies and finding ways to cooperate in both of our interests.

   The threats to the United States are not unique to the United States. These threats are threats to Russia and to nations all over the world. A missile defense system for the United States and our allies is not mutually exclusive from the interests and benefits of Russia. With President Bush's recent trip to Russia, that was formalized in two very important documents that were signed by Presidents Bush and Putin.

   So it is not a matter of a unilateral course of action for the United States to pursue missile defense. It is in the interest across the globe of all peoples who wish to make the world safer, more secure, more prosperous, more peaceful. And why is that? It is as much about defining opportunities and hope for the world as any one part of this equation or this debate. What we are facing in the Middle East, Afghanistan, Central Asia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and South Asia cannot be disconnected from this total development of policy that makes the world safer and more secure and more stable for the benefit of all people. These are factors that are not often pointed out in this debate about missile defense.

   Madam President, I urge my colleagues to take a close look at Senator Warner's amendment to put this funding into this Defense authorization bill--maybe as important a Defense authorization bill as we have seen in this country in many years. I hope my colleagues will read through what the amendment does. It is very simple: putting the money back in.

   I want my colleagues to take it the next few steps and ask themselves the consequences for slowing down missile defense development in this country.

   We, too often, get disconnected from the objective of the

   debate in Congress because we get snagged in the underbrush of the nuance, or the amendment at the time, or the argument at the time, or the newspaper headline tomorrow, or defending an amendment to an amendment; and we lose sight of the horizon, where do we go, why, and what is the point, and what is the bigger picture, the wider lens that is required? This is such an amendment. This is a wider lens amendment.

   I hope Senator Warner, when he introduces his amendment, will get a vote on that amendment. I hope this Senate will come forward with the votes to support Senator Warner's amendment because it is not just about how much damage we would do to the security interests of this country; it is about more than just that strategic and military dynamic. It is about the future course of our foreign policy, the enhancement of our relationships, and the ability to help bring peace and stability and prosperity to the world. This is what we debate.

   Defense is not just defense. Defense is about allowing a nation not just to defend itself but to prosper and reach out to help other nations and make the world safer. That is the big picture. That is what we pray for--not the amendment.

   So, again, I urge my colleagues to take some time to understand what this is about and the consequences of their vote. I am a cosponsor of Senator Warner's amendment. I have believed for some time that it is a responsible and relevant approach as part of our larger framework of interests and, certainly, strategic defense policy for our future.

   Madam President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

   The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

   Ms. LANDRIEU. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

   Ms. LANDRIEU. Madam President, I rise in opposition to the Warner amendment, and I wish to take as much time as I may consume.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator may proceed.

   Ms. LANDRIEU. I thank the Chair.

   Madam President, I rise, as I said, in opposition to the Warner amendment. The Warner amendment calls for the elimination of about $814 million in the

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   I thank Chairman LEVIN, the Senator from Michigan, for his outstanding work on pulling together this underlying bill. I particularly thank our subcommittee chairman, Senator JACK REED, who has worked very hard on this particular provision. I acknowledge their good work in this area.

   I rise in opposition to this amendment as a supporter of missile defense--not as one of its critics, not as a detractor for the missile defense system.

   The Warner amendment is unwise and unnecessary for two reasons, and I wish to comment about both reasons.

   First, the thrust of the amendment rests on very shaky fiscal parameters. Senator Conrad has spoken very well and clearly on this subject, but one of the problems--not substantive but technical problems--with this amendment is that it basically taps into revenues that do not exist. There

   is no ``real offset'' for this amendment. There is a claim of an offset, but it is going to be very difficult, if not impossible, to materialize that offset because of the thrust of this amendment.

   It says basically that this money is going to be found by anticipating fluctuations in the inflation rate, assuming that the inflation rate is going down when it is probably rising. Nonetheless, this money is not a real offset. It is based on very shaky fiscal principles, and that is one of the reasons I do not think we should support this amendment.

   The second reason, however, is a stronger argument, and it is more important, although the first argument is something to consider because if we do not consider it, then any Member of the Senate could offer any amendment to add $100 million, $50 million, $400 million, $600 million and say we are going to find an offset because we think inflation is going to move one way or the other, and so we are going to guess that the money may be available. It is a very bad precedent when we are talking about this much money in a time of tightening budgets and greater demands on the Federal budget, both domestic spending as well as military spending. I think it is a strong argument.

   The stronger argument is that it is wholly unnecessary to restore this amendment and claim that it in any way enhances or pushes forward and strengthens missile defense, because it does not. I would argue in some ways it will weaken our overall Defense bill, which is why I oppose it.

   Why do I say that? In the underlying bill, without the Warner amendment, we are spending 25 percent more for missile defense than we did 2 years ago, up to $6.8 billion, up from $5.1 billion when President Clinton was in his last year in office. Let me repeat, in the underlying bill, without the Warner amendment, there is a 25-percent increase in the Missile Defense Program.

   Democrats and Republicans on the committee, and Democrats in particular on this amendment, have supported a robust development of missile defense. We want to support the President in a strong Defense bill. We have met and exceeded the dollars he has asked for, but what we are saying and what I am suggesting is that the committee work has rewarded success in this program of missile defense. It acknowledges that it is important to develop a missile defense program for the United States, not undermining it, not cutting it, not trying to bury it, but to support it. That is what the underlying bill does: It rewards success, cutting out its redundancies and demanding the appropriate oversight that the American taxpayers deserve.

   This, after all, is a $7 billion program--not million; $7 billion. I have observed in my time in Congress--Madam President, perhaps you have observed this, too--that sometimes we give more scrutiny to a $164 welfare check or a $1,000 credit card charge or a $2,000 rebate that a small business might get from a subsidy, and we go over that with a fine-tooth comb to make sure that welfare mother, that small business owner, or that person just ``doesn't get away with murder'' with spending or mishandling $164 or the $2,000. Yet with a $7 billion program, we want to say: Let's not look at the details; this is what the President asked for; let's just do it that way exactly; they couldn't possibly be wrong even by a percentage point; they couldn't be off 1 penny. I think that is very hard, if not impossible, to accept as realistic.

   This bill looks carefully at the $7 billion program--and we did this in every program in the Defense bill--again, not undercutting it at all, matching the President's dollars, but shifting things around to make sure we can have a very good missile defense program.

   We could also address some immediate threats that everyone now in America, if they did not know it before September 11, knows now, and we all know as each week unfolds more and more clearly the other immediate threats, chemical, biological, nuclear threats, weapons of mass destruction, potentially poised against our Nation.

   The challenge is before our military to invest in their readiness, in their equipment, in their mobility, and in their restructuring. We know that we are not fighting the cold war anymore and we will not fight the cold war ever again, but we will be fighting this asymmetrical threat and so we want to have a strong military budget, a robust military budget, and allocate these funds accordingly.

   The underlying bill did that. It took a very small percentage of the overall missile defense, and as Senator Reed has so eloquently pointed out and let me restate, we reward success in the underlying bill. The Patriot Advanced Capability-3 system has tested well against multiple targets. That is part of the Missile Defense Program. It does not pass every test.

   Sometimes the critics of missile defense will point out, no, we cannot have it; this test failed. Well, in every success there are failures. We will fail a time or two, but if we continue to invest, continue to be wise and spend our money well, watching our budgets carefully but not undercutting this program, we can develop an effective missile defense system not only for ourselves but our allies and protect America in the future.

   The Patriot Advanced Capability-3 system has not passed every test, but its future to protect our allies and soldiers looks bright. Accordingly, the committee fully funds this part of the missile defense system, bringing it closer to deployment.

   Another part of the missile defense is the research program that we are doing in conjunction with Israel and others, but primarily Israel, the Arab program. It is a theater-wide missile defense system that we are developing. It has fared very well to date. Threats against Israel and U.S. forces in the Mideast certainly are real. Our committee increased funding for this project, again rewarding success, identifying what parts of the Missile Defense Program are successful and moving forward, using the money wisely and having success. We are supporting that.

   The subcommittee made some very smart recommendations. It looked at the whole $7 billion and it found in one instance--this is only one example--that the administration had asked for $371 million versus $202 million last year for systems engineering and integration. The request is more than the Pentagon can spend on system engineering. In committee, in a public hearing, DOD was unable to justify the request. Still, the committee added $29 million for a 13-percent increase to systems engineering and design, giving the benefit of the doubt but thought that would be a good place to move some money into some other important things in defense, which is our job as Members of Congress.

   I am proud we met the President's target on defense. I argued, let us not give one dollar less. If we can, let us give more. Some people have a different view, but I believe we need to support our defense in every way possible.

   I think moving this money to fund other activities in the Defense bill is not only wise, it sharpens our Missile Defense Program and sharpens our overall Defense bill and our budget.

   There are numerous examples like the one I gave about engineering and integration, which is what this committee did.

   The Warner amendment is unwise in a fiscal way. It is irresponsible to claim revenues that do not exist, to hope

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   But on a deeper level and a more important level, the amendment is unwarranted and unjustified because there is a robust budget for missile defense in this Defense bill. We have shifted some of the money, and I will talk about why we have tried to shift the $814 million that we identified as unnecessary, redundant, or unjustified to other programs in the military because there are, in addition to the threat from a missile that might come to this country from Iran or Iraq or North Korea or one of the other rogue nations, there are real and immediate threats and, I would argue, more present threats.

   Not that I do not believe missile defense is a threat. I do. Not everyone in Congress does, but I do believe it could be a threat and we need to deploy a system that will be cost effective to the taxpayer as well as technologically effective.

   In moving the $814 million to sharpen our Missile Defense Program and to sharpen our overall budget, we invested $124 million into hardening nuclear facilities against terrorist attacks. We have many nuclear facilities in this Nation. We have labs committed to the development and exploration of nuclear materials. DOE asked for it in the budget submission, but it was turned down.

   We have all seen reports of threats against our nuclear facilities. We know that whether one is in New York, in Louisiana, in Arkansas, or in some other place where nuclear facilities are present, the community is concerned, as they should be.

   Is our Government doing everything it can to protect us, to harden these facilities against attack? I think every Member of this Senate would like to be able to say we have added over $120 million to our nuclear facilities to provide tougher perimeters and systems that will protect from a terror attack.

   We have heard testimony not just before my Emerging Threats Subcommittee but many of our subcommittees about the importance of that. We took part of the savings that we identified and redirected it to shipbuilding. Shipbuilding is important to Louisiana. It is not just important to Mississippi because Ingall's Shipyard is there. It is not just important to Maine because of our colleagues, Senator Snowe and Senator Collins. Shipbuilding, ship procurement, and the sustaining and maintenance of at least a 310-ship Navy is very important to our military strategy. There has not been one committee that I have attended since I have been on the Armed Services Committee, whether we are talking about the Pacific, the Atlantic, the Caribbean, or other places in the world, that the admirals and the generals, the men and women in uniform, representing and protecting our Nation, have testified to anything other than a 310-ship Navy as an absolute minimum.

   There was a point in our history we had 900 ships. Now maybe we cannot afford 900 ships. Maybe we do not need 900 ships, but in this new world of asymmetrical threats, where we cannot wait for the enemy to come to us; we need to go to them, there are only two ways basically to get there: either by water or by air. We have to have both. We cannot rely only on our Air Force capabilities. We have to have a strong, robust Navy to fight on these battlefields wherever they might be, to transport our troops, to do it effectively, to do it safely.

   There is not a Member, I do not think, and particularly Senator Warner from Virginia, who comes from a huge Navy State, to argue that this was a poor or not thought-through reallocation of this money. Without it, we cannot build and continue to carry out our LPD-17s and other important shipbuilding and procurement that is underway right now with the Navy.

   Four thousand sorties have been flown from Navy ships in the Arabian Gulf. Our surveillance airplanes, our fighters, and our bombers get a lot of attention, but many of those sorties begin by lifting off from our aircraft carriers and from places that are bringing this equipment and these platforms and giving them a place to take off, refuel and take off again,

   to protect us from the threats of terrorism and other threats around the world.

   As we have seen in Afghanistan, we are in an age of war, fighting where we cannot forward-deploy our Armed Forces land-based near the theater. We are blocked by unfriendly nations from being able to fly over or to land at bases. Our Navy provides those places of security, those places for our armed men and women, our forces to regroup to get ready and take off for battle.

   At a time when the Navy is so vital to our war effort, the Navy could in this budget fall below 300 ships. This $690 million readjustment, or additional investment, taken from a program, while important, is not in the least bit delayed or undermined and will go a long way to strengthen our Navy.

   We add money for other counterterrorism priorities in this budget. We have moved some money--a good bit of money, but a very small percentage of the overall funding--from missiles to other parts of the budget that are crying out to be addressed: Our shortage of ships in the Navy, our need to secure our nuclear facilities, and there have been several other investments in counterterrorism.

   That was a wise decision. I was proud to support it in the committee. I urge my colleagues to reject the Warner amendment and to support Senator Levin and Senator Reid in this effort.

   I quote Gen. Henry Shelton, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on his view of threats posed by military ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction. General Shelton is a very decorated leader of our armed services. His reputation is without question. He said within this last year there are other serious threats out there in addition to that posed by ballistic missiles. We know, for example, there are adversaries with chemical and biological weapons that can attack the United States today. They can do it with a briefcase, by infiltrating our territory across our shores or through our airports.

   This underlying bill is attempting to address this real, broad, and asymmetrical effect. It can come from missiles, it can come from a briefcase, it can come from a container through one of our ports, it can come through a bomb planted in the back of a U-haul pickup truck, against any number of targets. This city, Washington, DC, our Capital, is rich with targets, but so are all the cities, including the home State of Washington of the Presiding Officer and my State of Louisiana.

   The taxpayers want us to make sure we are not just spending a lot of money on defense but we are spending it wisely, in the right places, and we are not overspending in one area and leaving ourselves vulnerable in another. Protecting our nuclear powerplants and supporting missile defense we can do. Investing in counterterrorism and supporting missile defense we can do. Building a strong Navy and supporting missile defense we can do. But we have to be smart about it and not just with some political slogan that looks good at election time. I am afraid that is what this is all about.

   Let's have a strong Defense bill, a smart Defense bill, a bill that matches the President more than dollar for dollar but makes good and wise choices about how we are spending those dollars.

   As a supporter of missile defense, I argue strongly against the Warner amendment and urge my colleagues to support what the committee did. This will be a very important vote,

   along with some other tough votes we will have to take regarding transportation and setting good priorities in our Defense bill.

   As the article on the secrecy shield in the Washington Post suggests, if we are going to spend $7 billion--and I support building the program--let's do it in the right way and make sure there is full public disclosure. There could be some aspects we do not want on the front page of every newspaper, but give the taxpayers the best missile defense system. Spend their money wisely. By putting up a secrecy shield, which is what this article based on a recent report that has come out is claiming, I believe as we move forward with our missile defense system, it needs to be done with full disclosure, without jeopardizing those features that might have to be kept in a classified position, so the taxpayers can be sure we are spending their money wisely.

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   In the words of General Shelton, there are many threats facing our Nation. The bill we are debating today is about preparing ourselves for all of those threats, allocating our resources wisely by making very good decisions. Lives depend on it. The strength of this Nation depends on it. Our future and the future of our allies depend on the decisions we make in the next few days on this very important bill. This is one of those decisions.

   Let's say we are going to shift money, strengthen missile defense, sharpen it, but also strengthen our other defenses so we can protect the people. They sent us here to do no less.

   Mr. McCAIN. Madam President, less than 2 weeks ago America marked the historic demise of the ABM Treaty. We did so in accordance with the treaty's terms, and with the consent of Russia, acknowledging that the strategic rivalry that dominated our relationship for three decades is a thing of the past, in word and in deed. I find it remarkable that removal of the legal and diplomatic constraints formerly placed on the development of America's missile defenses has been replaced by political constraints imposed by members of the Armed Services Committee.

   As my colleagues know, the committee bill slashed the President's budget request for missile defense programs by $812 million. I appreciate that missile defense was a controversial issue when it was viewed by some as a threat to United States-Russia relations. These critics argued that the strategic stability we enjoyed from the cold war-era ``balance of terror'' would be put at grave risk by President Bush's support for missile defense development unconstrained by treaty limitations.

   These critics were wrong. I did not then agree with them, but I understood their position. Today, however, we live in a post-ABM Treaty world, forged with the cooperation and explicit consent of the Russian Government.

   No longer does this arms control agreement regulate our development of anti-missile systems. No longer does America's diplomatic relationship with Russia require us to pay allegiance to an arms control relic of an adversarial past. The President has consistently stated that the development of effective missile defenses is a priority of his administration, and a requirement in an age of proliferation. Most Americans support the construction of missile defenses, especially if it is done in a way that doesn't violate our treaty commitments. Rather than alienate our friends overseas, America's missile defense development, some of which will be coordinated with the Russians and our allies, will one day help protect allies in Europe and Asia from missile assault. If properly managed, our international alliances will be strengthened, not weakened, by these systems. I believe they will enhance, not undermine, strategic stability.

   It is troubling that the committee bill would deny the administration the resources and flexibility to aggressively pursue a range of missile defense programs, at a time when diplomatic and treaty constraints on that development no longer restrict our freedom of action. One motivation of missile defense critics is their belief that effective missile defenses are no more than a Reagan-era fantasy, a political project that disregards daunting technological obstacles to achievement. But by slashing nearly a billion dollars from missile defense development in the coming fiscal year alone, critics create a self-fulfilling prophecy. By definition, their denial of requested resources makes it nearly impossible for the administration to meet its objective to deploy missile defenses as soon as possible. I would remind my colleagues that only 3 years ago, 97 United States Senators voted to deploy ``as soon as technologically possible an effective National Missile Defense System capable of defending the territory of the United States against limited ballistic missile attack.''

   Expert studies show that political and funding constraints have in fact impeded progress on developing and deploying missile defenses. Of the many missile defense programs, one of the most cost-effective and, if properly executed, most readily deployable would be a sea-based program using the Navy's existing Aegis fleet air defense assets. If accorded the proper priority and resources, populated areas along America's coasts, forward-deployed U.S. forces, and U.S. allies could begin to come under a limited missile defense umbrella before the end of the President's first term. Indeed, had the advice of many defense experts been followed since 1995, when a blue-ribbon commission first called for withdrawal from the ABM Treaty and pursuit of Aegis-evolved missile defenses, such protection would likely have been put into place before now.

   We are a nation at war. The administration is seriously contemplating a military campaign against Iraq, a nation armed with short-range ballistic missiles that took their toll on American troops and Israeli civilians during the Persian Gulf war. Saddam Hussein is also known to be pursuing more sophisticated missile systems. In any military campaign, our forces and our allies would be at risk from Iraqi warheads containing biological or chemical agents. Iran is pursuing an ICBM program and could test it within 3 years, according to our intelligence community's consensus estimate. Iran is also aggressively pursuing a nuclear capability. Our intelligence community assesses that North Korea today possesses the capability to hit the United States with a nuclear weapon-sized payload. Many experts believe the North Koreans already possess enough weapons-grade plutonium for several nuclear weapons.

   America faces the risk of strategic blackmail from nations such as these whose possession of sophisticated missile technology puts them in a position to restrict our flexibility to deploy military forces where and when they are needed. Much of the missile defense debate has focused on defense of the U.S. homeland, and this is important. But development of effective missile defenses is critical not only to protect America, but to preserve our military options overseas, by allowing us to meet threats to our interests around the world. Effective missile defenses will allow American forces the flexibility to operate in regions where the presence of a dangerous regime armed with ballistic missiles would otherwise unacceptably constrain American military operations.

   America's defenselessness to missile attack, and the vulnerability of our overseas forces and our allies to rogue regimes with advanced missile capabilities, are the Achilles' heel of American foreign policy. Preserving our ability to deploy military forces across the globe requires us to protect against threats of missile attack that, left unmet, could one day cause us to acquiesce to acts of aggression overseas in order not to expose ourselves to attack. Missile defenses will reduce the possibility of strategic blackmail by rogue regimes.

   The threats are real. The diplomatic foundation has been laid. The potential of missile defense technology is clear. The implications of rendering America defenseless as a strategic choice are morally troubling. The case for missile defense is compelling. The threat of terrorism is grave, but the rise of this clear and present danger does not diminish the menace that rogue regimes that cavort with terror and aggressively pursue weapons of mass destruction pose to America. I urge my colleagues to support the Warner amendment to restore the President's requested funding for missile defense programs.

   Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. Madam President, I rise in strong support of the amendment offered by my friend and colleague, Senator WARNER, to restore funding for missile defense.

   The cuts made during markup, while amounting to ``only'' 10 to 11 percent of the overall missile defense budget, are targeted to decapitate the program and destine it to failure. President Bush will likely veto the Defense authorization bill if we do not restore funding to missile defense.

   I have long been a strong proponent of missile defense. We must take the appropriate steps to protect our homeland against all threats. An effective missile defense is a key element in homeland security. There are those who discount the threat. However, a recent national intelligence estimate (NIE) warned that a rogue nation, other than China or Russia, will be capable of a ballistic missile attack against the United Stats before 2015.

   I believe we will face the threat in the near term, well before 2015. The threat is real, and it is now, not in the

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   We need to get serious about developing and fielding a missile defense system. We can't wait for another September 11-like event to spur us into action. Complacency is our enemy. For the sake of our children and our grandchildren, I hope that reason will prevail and that we will vote to pass this amendment.

   I commend President Bush for withdrawing from the ABM Treaty. The ABM Treaty was a cold war relic that deserved to be discarded. I also applaud the Bush administration for its new approach toward missile defense. Approaching missile defense as an integrated ``system of systems,'' with layered defense in phases--boost, midcourse, and terminal--is the right thing to do. Unfortunately, the cuts during markup targeted the critically important systems engineering and command and control elements of missile defense.

   In effect, the cuts removed the ``system of systems'' architecture that is important to the new approach to missile defense. The national intelligence estimate was clear. North Korea, Iraq, Iran, and others actively seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction and longer range ballistic missiles. China already has ICBMs capable of hitting the United States and has threatened to use them if the United States interceded in a conflict with Taiwan. Effective missile defense is one of the most complex technical problems to face our Nation, and one that requires innovative solutions.

   I applaud the new approach for the development and rapid fielding of missile defense. It is the right approach given the unique challenges of the program and the looming threat. There has been much unwarranted confusion over the non-traditional approach to defining requirements for missile defense, and the review and oversight process. Some allege that the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has been given cart blanche to spend taxpayer money on outlandish technologies with no oversight.

   These allegations are totally unfounded, and are largely intended by ideological opponents of missile defense to alarm and confuse the public. Developing a missile defense system is, as Pete Aldridge, the Deputy Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics said, like operating in ``uncharted waters.''

   In order to define the requirements for the system in the face of maturing technologies and the unpredictable future threat, the Missile Defense Agency will use an evolutionary or ``spiral'' development approach. In most complex programs like missile defense, it is extremely difficult in the early stages of development to define in sufficient detail what the fielded system will look like, how it will perform, and what its functional characteristics will be. These items are normally described in operational requirements documents, or ORDs. However, far too often, the services, with the best of intentions, write the operational requirements documents (ORDs) too early in development with their ``best guess'' on what the parameters should be, and then spend huge amounts of money trying to drive programs to meet those requirements.

   In missile defense, these final requirements at this point are impossible to determine. Using ``spiral'' development. In other words, developing the system in increments and fielding capabilities as soon as they are ready will allow the Department of Defense to field an effective missile defense as rapidly as possible. Some argue that this program will not receive the proper amount of oversight both within the Department of Defense and from the Congress. The truth is that this program will have more oversight than any other program in the DOD, and I am confident that the Armed Services Committee will continue its diligent oversight role as well.

   I would like to say a few words about the level of DOD oversight on missile defense so the record is clear. A group of senior Defense officials, including Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Pete Aldridge, and the service Secretaries will act as a ``board of directors'' for missile defense and will review the missile defense program on a periodic basis. In fact, this group has already reviewed the program multiple times in the last few months and will continue to do so in the future. Keep in mind that the average DOD acquisition program does not have this level of oversight.

   In addition, a second oversight group, the Missile Defense Support Group, also has been created to review missile defense. This group resembles the Defense Acquisition Board, which on traditional acquisition programs only reviews the program at key milestones. However, the Missile Defense Support Group will review the program on a quarterly basis. Furthermore, the oversight panel is supported by a staff that will conduct day-to-day oversight to ensure that the program remains on track. Of course, the Congress will continue its oversight role as before. Nothing has changed in that regard.

   The concerns about a lack of oversight are unfounded. I would like to conclude by once again applauding the Bush administration for revamping the Missile Defense Program into one that has the highest probability for success. Let's get on with the task. Our Nation's security and the safety of millions of Americans depend on us.

   I would also like to thank Senator WARNER for his leadership on this issue, and would encourage all my colleagues to vote for this amendment.

   Mr. BAUCUS. Madam President, I rise today to briefly comment on my vote against Senator Kennedy's amendment to the Defense authorization bill.

   This amendment would have resulted in a fundamental change in the way the Department of Defense is structured. It mandated a new policy for every new, modified, or renewed contract for all noninherently governmental services within the Department of Defense. The consequences of such a change at this point in time would not, in my estimation, serve the best interests of my State or of this Nation.

   Small businesses are an integral part of Montana's economy. Small businesses meet the diverse, everyday needs of Montana's citizens; many Montana small businesses also successfully compete for federal contracts. The provisions of this amendment would have priced many small businesses out of Federal contract competitions. In light of Montana's struggling economy, I could not vote for an amendment that would have increased small business costs while creating an insurmountable hurdle that need not exist.

   I am also keenly aware of the human capital crunch that the Federal Government currently faces. The Department of Defense faces particular challenges as they seek to maintain readiness while adjusting to post-cold war and post-September 11 realities. This amendment would have resulted in increased personnel costs for the Department of Defense, but, more importantly, it would have delayed contract awards and adversely affected mission effectiveness. This is not in the best interest of our nation's security or economic needs.

   I am a strong supporter of labor standards in both the private and public sectors. Upholding labor standards for all Montanans is a top priority for me. I also firmly believe that the Federal Government needs to secure the best services, whether public or private, for the taxpayer dollars it expends. In examining this amendment, I felt that it did not uphold these standards. Instead, the amendment held the potential to harm Montana's small business viability and exacerbate the public-sector federal human capital shortage.

   MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY AND RESEARCH

   Ms. COLLINS. Madam. President, I rise today to discuss medical research aimed at preserving blood products, human organs, and other wound-repairing tissues. As the chairman may recall, last year I discussed with Chairman LEVIN the fact that this research could dramatically impact our ability

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   Recent U.S. military actions have resulted in stationing troops in harsh climates and conditions, such as those experience in Afghanistan. Current locations and missions require new capabilities in combat casualty care, and these capabilities would include stable blood products, organs, and wound repairing tissues that will enhance human survivability under conditions of trauma, shock, anoxia, and other extreme conditions, including extreme environment. The Department of Defense needs to develop tissues with a long shelf life to support combat casualty care. Research in this area could develop stress-tolerant biosystems or tissues that selectively control critical metabolic processes by exploiting an enhanced understanding of differential gene expression in bio-organisms and systems exposed to extreme environments.

   Ms. LANDRIEU. The Senator from Maine is quite correct in her observation and assessment that medical treatment, and specifically combat casualty care, particularly in a time of war, should not be overlooked. Further, the Department of Defense must consider all initiatives that could provide our military physicians and medical staff the tools necessary to save the lives of men and women whose service to our Nation puts them at risk of severe injury.

   Ms. COLLINS. I am hopeful that as our bill moves through floor consideration and conference with the House, we can work to ensure that this type of research is adequately funded within the Department of Defense.

   There are many aspects to consider in taking care of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines who are sent into harm's way. In times like these, preserving the well-being of our men and men in uniform should be given the investment necessary to see that research like this gets to the field.

   Ms. LANDRIEU. I thank the distinguished Senator from Maine for highlighting the critical nature of this research. I recognize her interest in this particular area and that this research clearly has potential for saving lives, both military and civilian. I look forward to working with her on this issue as the Fiscal Year 2003 National Defense Authorization bill moves forward.

   Ms. COLLINS. I thank the distinguished chairman for her commitment to support investments in the well-being of a most precious national asset--our men and women in uniform. And I look forward to working with her on this important issue. The support of the chairman of the Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee will be critical, and welcomed, to see that leading edge medical research is not only explored, but deployed in the days ahead.

   Mr. REID. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

   The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

   Mr. REID. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

END

2C) The Missile Defense Debate
Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, we have in many ways a good Defense authorization bill. I am sorry we are debating again this year over national missile defense.

   Last year, the same debate occurred. It was about the only major disagreement we had over the Defense authorization bill, but it is a very important issue. It is important to the people of the United States. It is important to the President and the Secretary of Defense who are charged with defending our homeland against attack. We have to debate it again this year. That is healthy. That is what this body is all about.

   In 1999, it is important to recall, the Senate voted 97 to 3 to ``deploy as soon as technologically feasible a national missile defense system.'' That represented the overwhelming consensus of opinion in this body. President Clinton signed that bill. President Clinton stated that he favored the deployment of a national missile defense system.

   During the 2000 campaign, Vice President Gore said he was for it. President Bush made quite clear in his campaign for the Presidency that he considered the deployment of a national missile defense system a high priority for America.

   We should not fail to note that Vice President Gore's candidate for Vice President, Senator JOE LIEBERMAN, was

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   It is a bipartisan issue. There is no doubt about it. President Bush had it somewhat higher on his priority than President Clinton, but everybody was on board about the issue in general.

   When President Bush became President, he proposed last year for the 2002 budget a $7.8 billion national missile defense budget.

   President Clinton had proposed a $5.3 billion national defense budget, so he was a little over $2 billion above what President Clinton proposed. We voted on it in committee. On a party-line vote, the Democratic majority struck that increase--or a significant portion of it--from the bill. We took it to the floor last year and, after full debate, that money was restored.

   Again this year the President asked for missile defense funds. It is not correct, however, to say he asked for an increase. He actually asked for less this year for national missile defense. He asked for, I believe, $7.6 billion this year as opposed to $7.8 billion last year, all of which was necessary to complete the research and development and testing that is necessary to bring this system online. Let me note, people say that is billions and billions of dollars. It is a lot of money, no doubt about it; but we have a $376.2 billion defense budget. The $7.6 billion needed to deploy and bring online a national missile defense system to protect us from missile attack is not too much, in my opinion, and is a rather small part of the overall defense budget.

   So, again, we had in committee a 13 to 12 party-line vote on a motion that cut the President's request by over $814.3 million this year. And the way those cuts were made--as Senator Cochran and others have noted, those cuts took parts of programs and undermined the brain trust or the capabilities of many of the systems--some of the testing capabilities that the people who have been a critic of the system say we ought to do. It undermined our ability to do that.

   It is an unwise act, in my view. We need a continual, steady funding source that the Defense Department can count on so that they can develop, over a period of years, an effective national missile defense system. We would be very unwise if every year we cut a little bit and try to fight to put that back and go up and down in the budget. That costs more money in the long run and is not healthy. It was one of the President's top priorities when he took office. It is a top priority, I believe, of all Americans. I believe we should go forward with it.

   Well, people say: Why do we need this budget? Why do we need a national missile defense? There are a lot of threats to America, but we don't believe we are threatened by intercontinental ballistic missiles--or words to that effect.

   Several years ago, when President Clinton was President, he appointed a bipartisan commission, or one was selected and put together. The chairman turned out to be the now Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. That commission, after studying the intelligence situation, the threats facing America--Republicans and Democrats of both parties--unanimously agreed that we were facing an increased threat; that we would, indeed, be facing a ballistic missile threat to this country sooner than had been projected; and that we needed to prepare ourselves.

   So I would like people to know how these things occur. We don't just, out of the blue, come up with ideas that we need to have a national missile defense. We deal with some of the best experts. We listen to their testimony in the Senate Armed Services Committee and, based on that testimony under oath, recognizing that what witnesses say has great import, they help us decide how to spend our resources.

   Admiral Wilson, the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told us this recently, on March 19 of this year, about Iran: Iran continues ``the development and acquisition of longer

   range missiles and weapons of mass destruction to deter the United States and to intimidate Iran's neighbors.'' He added about Iran, ``It is buying and developing longer range missiles.''

   He notes that Iran already has chemical weapons and is ``pursuing biological and nuclear capabilities,'' both of which can be placed inside an intercontinental ballistic missile. He concludes on Iran that Iran will ``likely acquire a full range of weapons of mass destruction capability, field substantial numbers of ballistic and cruise missiles, including perhaps an ICBM, that will be capable of hitting the United States.''

   Admiral Wilson on Iraq: ``Baghdad continues to work on short-range--150 kilometer--missiles and can use this expertise for future long-range missile development.'' He adds, ``Iraq may also have begun to reconstitute chemical and biological weapons programs,'' as we have heard so much concern expressed about, all of which can be delivered by missile. Wilson concludes that ``it is possible that Iraq can develop and test an ICBM capable of reaching the United States by 2015.''

   Admiral Wilson on North Korea: ``Korea continues to place heavy emphasis on the improvement of its military capability and North Korea continues its robust efforts to develop more capable ballistic missiles.''

   We know North Korea has been doing that for some time and testing those missiles. Admiral Wilson said this specifically as to North Korea: It is ``developing an ICBM capability with its Taepo Dong 2 missile, judged capable of delivering a several hundred kilogram payload to Alaska and Hawaii, and a lighter payload to the western half of the United States.'' They have that capability in North Korea now.

   The President of the United States has to deal with these issues. He has to consider what might happen as he deals with these countries.

   Admiral Wilson, further on North Korea, added this: ``It probably has the capability to field''--that means put into place right now--``an ICBM within the next couple of years.'' That is a frightening thought. ``North Korea continues,'' he added, ``to proliferate''--that is to sell or distribute--``weapons of mass destruction, and especially weapons technology.''

   CIA Director George Tenet, in March of this year before the Armed Services Committee, said this about the Chinese military buildup:

   Earlier this month, Beijing announced a 17.6 increase in defense spending, replicating last year's increase of 17.7 percent. If this trend continues, China could double its announced defense spending between 2000 and 2005.

   Tenet added further on China:

   China continues to make progress toward fielding its first generation of road-mobile strategic missiles, the DF-31, a longer range version, capable of reaching targets in the United States, which will become operational later this decade.

   In the CIA's unclassified report of January 10 of this year, entitled ``Foreign Missile Development,'' they wrote this:

   China has about 20 liquid propellant missiles, silo based, that could reach targets in the United States.

   The report also said China continues ``a long-running modernizational program and expects within 15 years to have 75 to 100 ICBM's deployed primarily against the United States.''

   Admiral Wilson, testifying about the China situation, noted:

   One of Beijing's top military priorities is to strengthen and modernize its small daily strategic nuclear deterrent force.

   He continues:

   The number, reliability, survivability, and accuracy of Chinese strategic missiles, capable of hitting the United States, will increase during the next 10 years.

   There are about 15 to 16 countries now that have these kinds of missiles. I shared those from some recent testimonies we have had before our committee. This is not a myth. We are not talking about an abstract idea. We are talking about a different world. In the previous world, the Soviet Union had missiles, we had missiles, and we entered into a treaty to bar the deployment of a national missile defense system. We agreed to that, and it worked for some time.

   Unfortunately--or fortunately in some ways--the country we had a treaty with, the Soviet Union, no longer exists, but Russia exists. The treaty was with the Soviet Union. During that same period of time, all these other countries were developing the capabilities to threaten us. So we now had a treaty with a country that used to be our enemy, and it no longer is, that was barring us from deploying and producing a defensive system for our country. That did not make sense, and the

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   President Bush worked on this, and the Russians knew this was not critical to their defense. We knew it was not critical to the Russian defense. What was important about it was it was complicating our ability to develop a missile system that made sense. Under that treaty, we were trying to build a system that could have only one location for the missiles. It has to cover the entire United States from that one system. The treaty explicitly prohibited mobile systems such as ship-based; it kept us from developing a system that would take out missiles in the launch phase; it would have kept us from doing space-based defense systems, all of which were prohibited by the treaty.

   President Bush was serious about national missile defense, and he took the steps to eliminate that. Indeed, Phil Coyle, who has been a big critic of the national missile defense system, in a recent quote in the newspaper said, with grudging admiration--I think he said, well, they are serious about it. And that is correct. This President is serious about producing a layered defense system for America.

   We are doing it for the $7.6 billion in this year's budget. If we do this over a period of years, we are going to be able to successfully implement a system that can protect us from limited missile attack. It cannot protect us from the kind of attack the Russians could have launched, but it can protect us against limited attack, accidental attack, or rogue nation attack. We have that capability, and we should do it. We do not need President Bush sitting down eyeball to eyeball with Saddam Hussein, knowing Saddam Hussein can push a button and a nuclear weapon or a chemical or biological weapon that he has can hit New York City or some other American city. We do not need him in that position. He does not need to be there, and we can avoid that.

   Great nations do not allow themselves to be in a situation where the ability to act in their national interest will be compromised by these kinds of threats by nations that have not shown themselves to have a commitment to civilized behavior. That is simply where we are.

   So I believe this country needs to deploy this national

   missile defense system. I am sorry there are some who do not agree, and they have been consistent in opposing it in every way possible. I have to respect that, but we voted 97 to 3 to deploy it. Both Presidential candidates said they wanted it. We funded it last year at $7.8 billion, after a full floor debate, and we did not do it thinking that was going to be the only year we funded national missile defense. When we voted last year to fund national missile defense, we contemplated and considered that we would be funding it on a steady basis to complete a program as the President envisioned. We have to start now. They say these missiles are not able to reach us today. Well, it takes a number of years to develop, get the bugs out, and study this system so we have the best system.

   The President has been tough about this. He cancelled the Navy theater-wide program that many people believed in, but it was behind schedule, over budget, and not performing, so he cancelled it. He said that is not getting us to where we need to go. He has shown he is willing to make tough calls, but the ultimate goal is to reach a situation in which we can deploy a system by the time our enemies have the capability of reaching us.

   This Senate is at its best when we talk about important issues. I believe in many ways this one has been settled. The American people voted for two candidates who favored it in the last election. The President has pushed it forward. We funded it last year at the President's request; we should not come in now to take a big whack out of it and target programs that really are pretty key. These cuts have the unfortunate impact of undermining some of the work that would be done.

   For example, it eliminates 10 THAAD missiles. Those are the theater missiles. When we have troops out on the battlefield in the theater of operations, if Saddam Hussein has a missile that will go 150 kilometers, then he can hit them if he cannot hit the United States. So we cannot deploy our people and leave them vulnerable to being annihilated by an enemy attack if we have the capability to defend it, and we do. The THAAD is going to be a highly successful program, but this bill, as it was voted out of committee over my objection, would eliminate 10 THAAD missiles that would be used for future testing and it would put the success of the program in jeopardy by not allowing it to fly through failures.

   In other words, these programs have to be tested, robust tested. Some of the critics are probably correct in saying we did not have enough testing in the system. The President's budget will enhance testing.

   The bill, as proposed on the floor today, delays or eliminates planning for promising boost phase programs. In other words, one of the best ways to knock down an incoming missile is when it is coming off the ground in the foreign country. So if it falls back, it falls back on their country. If it is missed, there still may be an ABM system in the United States that can knock it down later. If those systems could be knocked down through absolute communications capabilities in the region, sea-based capabilities, that would be ideal. All of that was prohibited in the treaty. That is one of the reasons the President got rid of it.

   This bill, as it is today, would eliminate planning for promising boost phase programs. It eliminates sea- and space-based kinetic kill experiments in the field. It imposes serious risk to the airborne laser program by eliminating funding for a second aircraft testing program. It will not allow the airborne laser program to fly through failure, to figure out what will really work and make it successful. It imposes numerous tests and evaluation restrictions and duplicative oversight requirements on the Missile Defense Agency.

   We have been very fortunate that General Kadish is head of this program. He is a man of ability, integrity, and steadfastness. He has nurtured it through good and ill. He has seen it hit successfully time and again in recent months, and he is leading it on through quite a successful program. It has been well managed. He is very concerned about these cuts. It will complicate his strategic vision of how to produce and deploy this system as we have told him we want him to do.

   It is important to know that we have a man in charge who is capable and knows how to get the job done, and he is very troubled that we are cutting back in this fashion.

   In sum, I note these cuts will expose the United States to unnecessary risks if we enact them. I do not believe they will be enacted. I believe we will vote to restore the cuts. I know the bill passed in the House of Representatives has this funding in it, and they will insist on it. I am not sure the President will accept the bill that has these large cuts in our national missile defense.

   It is time to move ahead. I believe we can deploy a system that is layered in nature, that will have a shot at knocking down an attacking missile in a boost phase, that can hit in midcourse and defend again with a layer system on the land of the United States. Then we will not be in the bizarre situation of several years ago when we were trying to maneuver our national missile defense system to fit the ABM Treaty, to allow just one site to produce, that would limit testing and development in a lot of different areas.

   We are on the right track. Let's stay the course. Let's not back up now. Let's not manipulate this program and endanger it. This is a small part, $800 million out of a $386 billion budget. Let's not gimmick around with it. Let's get on with it. Let's stay committed. We will save money in the long run and have a system that will protect the people of the United States from rogue attack, from nations that are desperately attempting to have an ICBM system such as Korea and Iraq.

2D) National Defense Authorization, Warner Amendment
Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry: It is the understanding of the Senator from Virginia that the time between 2:15 and 2:30 is to be equally divided between the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts, the distinguished Senator from Wyoming, and myself.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.

   Who yields time?

   Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I yield myself 3 minutes.

   Mr. President, under our amendment, the public workers and private contractors alike will have a chance to compete for Department of Defense contracts. It will represent approximately $100 billion. Only about $1 billion of that is competed for. We believe competition is good. We believe competition will get the best product at the best price, which will reflect the unanimous recommendations of the recent study. Fewer than 1 percent of these Department of Defense service contracts are done in that way at this particular time.

   I don't understand for the life of me why there should be resistance or reluctance to these various proposals. This kind of proposal was considered by the Commercial Activities Panel on improving the sourcing division of the Government, which was chaired by the Comptroller of the United States.

   In this particular proposal, one of the recommendations, which was 12 to 0, was the amendment we are offering today. If our Republican friends have trouble with that, why wasn't there some opposition to that in this report? There was none. It is a unanimously favorable report. This wasn't Democrat and this wasn't Republican. These were contractors, representatives of the public, employees, and accountants, talking about how the U.S. Department of Defense could get the best buy for its money. It was said for years that we couldn't go ahead with competition until we finally got the Commercial Activities Panel report. That took a year and half and 11 different hearings with public comments from all over.

   This was unanimous. It was not 8 to 4; this proposal was unanimous. They believe as a result of their proposal that DOD is going to get the best services--the American taxpayers are going to get the best buy, the best service, and the men and women of the military are going to be best served.

   Why in the world the resistance to that argument?

   I withhold the remainder of my time.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. CORZINE). The Senator from Wyoming.

   Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I yield myself 5 minutes of our time. We have 7 1/2 minutes. I yield myself 5 minutes out of our 7 1/2 minutes.

   I want to respond to the Senator. He asks, who opposes this? Let me give you some idea of who and why.

   One, the amendment will increase costs to DOD by $200 million a year. Secondly, he talks about the report of

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   The amendment would adversely affect DOD's mission. It would mandate, for the first time, that the Federal Government compete with the private sector for work not concurrently performed.

   It has problems with the A-76 issue. The Secretary of Defense opposes the Kennedy amendment. The administration has indicated that his proposal goes against the President's governmental performance tasks.

   Let me share with you, very briefly, a couple of other comments. This is from the Executive Office of the President, from Mitchell Daniels, who was quoted yesterday as supporting it. He says:

   I am writing to express deep concern over the possible Kennedy Amendment.

   He goes on to say:

   We must focus our agencies on performance and accountability. Now--when our nation is at war against terrorists of global reach--is not the time for the Secretary of Defense to have fewer options, for the sake of moving more functions into government hands.

   That is why people are opposed to it. The Secretary of Defense, in a letter, says:

   I am writing to express my strong opposition to the draft amendment proposed by Senator Edward Kennedy.

   Then he closes the letter by saying:

   The proposed amendment would increase Department costs and dull our warfighting edge.

   Then, just in numbers, we all mentioned the Secretary of Defense and OMB. We also have organized labor. The Seafarers International Union, the Industrial Technological Professional Employees, International Union of Operating Engineers, the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers--these are some of the folks who have found that this will not help implement what we are seeking to do; that is, to be able to utilize the members of the military and the things they do at a time when it is more difficult to fullfill those responsibilities. To shift some of those responsibilities back to the military away from the private sector seems to be absolutely contrary to what we are seeking to do.

   I urge all Members of the Senate to oppose this amendment.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?

   Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I yield myself another 2 minutes.

   I have listened to my friend and colleague. He says they are opposed because of cost. The fact is, how do they say it is going to cost more when we are going to get competition? We are going to get competition.

   The fact remains we have the unanimous recommendation of the group that studied this issue, and they believed the taxpayer would be best served, and DOD would be best served as well with that recommendation.

   What is the current situation? Under the current situation, I understand if you are able to get the contracts, you do not want to change the system. That is what is going on on the floor of the Senate. They do not want competition. They have their contracts. They have the sweetheart contracts, and they are saying no.

   Listen to this: The GAO found that the costs of nearly 3,000 spare parts purchased by the military increased by 1,000 percent or more in just 1 year. If you have that kind of contract, why do you want competition?

   There it is. Taxpayers are the ones losing out. One small part, a hub, estimated to cost $35, was sold to the Government at the contractor's price for $14,000. If you have that kind of deal, why do you want competition? That is the issue, plain and simple.

   It is not just the belief of the Senator from Massachusetts, that is the unanimous recommendation of those who have studied it, contractors, workers, and all. Most of us believe that competition does improve the services and the quality of the products. So you find out that is the result.

   We have heard time in and time out about the various kinds of products that have been produced, and the costs and the escalation of those costs. I have a sheet right in my hand. This is the GAO oversight. These are the costs on it.

   Hub, body, estimated to cost $35, sold for $14,000; transformer, radio, $683 was the unit price, but they charged $11,700; The list goes on and on.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has used 2 minutes.

   Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I yield myself another minute.

   I have not heard from the other side the answer to these questions. Why don't we have something other than just reading a letter from some people who are serving the interests of those contractors and explain to me why they cannot do it? We have not heard it. It is going to be difficult. It is going to be awkward. Yet we have the very important statements that have been made by people, even within the current administration, who say this can result in competition that can result in important savings.

   That is what we want to do. That is what this amendment is about.

   I reserve the remainder of my time.

   Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining?

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. One minute 20 seconds.

   Mr. KENNEDY. I reserve the remainder of my time.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time in opposition?

   Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, how much time does the other side have?

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The opposition has 3 minutes 52 seconds.

   Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I yield myself my remaining time.

   Mr. President, on September 11, the brave men and women who work in the Pentagon faced a great tragedy. When that airplane plowed into the Department of Defense, our fellow citizens working there lost coworkers and joined in the valiant effort to save the injured and tend to the Defense Department families shaken by this act of terrorism.

   This amendment is about giving these Americans a chance, a chance to show they can do a good job and deserve the work, if they can do it better and more efficiently than a defense contractor, a chance to embrace the American spirit of competition and free enterprise by competing for Government contracts on the same basis as private-sector companies.

   And this amendment is about our values as Americans. Our country was built upon our ingenuity, fueled by the spirit of free enterprise. If you can make a better product at a lower cost than the other guy, then you deserve the business. That is the American way. And it is that spirit of entrepreneurship that makes America the envy of the world.

   My amendment lets that American spirit thrive. It puts real competition into defense contracting and, in the process, gives a real boost to the taxpayers and to our own values as Americans.

   I urge the Senate to support my amendment.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?

   The Senator from Virginia.

   Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, have the yeas and nays been order?

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. They have not.

   Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?

   Mr. WARNER. And I would simply say to my good friend from Massachusetts, what has been omitted from this discussion is the tens upon tens of thousands of Government employees doing superb work in the public shipyards, in the rework centers in several States. Somehow we have looked at a very narrow segment of the overall business of the Department of Defense without referring to the magnificent contributions by hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Government employees.

   So, Mr. President, at this time I move to table.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator yield back his time?

   Mr. WARNER. All time is yielded back on this side.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator from Massachusetts yield the remainder of his time?

   Mr. KENNEDY. I believe my time has expired.

   I believe we need to ask for the yeas and nays on the motion to table; am I correct?

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?

   Mr. KENNEDY. On the motion to table.

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   The PRESIDING OFFICER. There is a sufficient second.

   The question is on agreeing to the motion.

   The clerk will call the roll.

   The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.

   Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. HELMS) is necessarily absent.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber desiring to vote?

   The result was announced--yeas 50, nays 49, as follows:

   [Rollcall Vote No. 162 Leg.]

   Allard

   Allen

   Baucus

   Bennett

   Bond

   Breaux

   Brownback

   Bunning

   Burns

   Campbell

   Chafee

   Cochran

   Collins

   Craig

   Crapo

   DeWine

   Domenici

   Ensign

   Enzi

   Fitzgerald

   Frist

   Gramm

   Grassley

   Gregg

   Hagel

   Hatch

   Hutchinson

   Hutchison

   Inhofe

   Kyl

   Lott

   Lugar

   McCain

   McConnell

   Murkowski

   Nickles

   Roberts

   Santorum

   Sessions

   Shelby

   Smith (NH)

   Smith (OR)

   Snowe

   Specter

   Stevens

   Thomas

   Thompson

   Thurmond

   Voinovich

   Warner

   Akaka

   Bayh

   Biden

   Bingaman

   Boxer

   Byrd

   Cantwell

   Carnahan

   Carper

   Cleland

   Clinton

   Conrad

   Corzine

   Daschle

   Dayton

   Dodd

   Dorgan

   Durbin

   Edwards

   Feingold

   Feinstein

   Graham

   Harkin

   Hollings

   Inouye

   Jeffords

   Johnson

   Kennedy

   Kerry

   Kohl

   Landrieu

   Leahy

   Levin

   Lieberman

   Lincoln

   Mikulski

   Miller

   Murray

   Nelson (FL)

   Nelson (NE)

   Reed

   Reid

   Rockefeller

   Sarbanes

   Schumer

   Stabenow

   Torricelli

   Wellstone

   Wyden

   Helms

   The motion was agreed to.

   Mr. DASCHLE. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

   The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

   Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

   The Senator from Mississippi.

   Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote, and I move to lay that motion on the table.

   The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

   UNANIMOUS CONSENT REQUEST--S.J. RES. 34

   Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I know we have a lot of work to do on the Defense authorization bill. I believe we are making good progress. I know Senator Daschle is going to have to make a call sometime today about whether or not we are going to be able to get a lockdown list or whether he files cloture. I am interested in discussing that with him before he makes a final decision because we want to be helpful in getting the work done.

   I had indicated earlier also that we hoped we could get a time agreement and understanding and all Senators would be on notice as to when we would proceed on the issue involving the Yucca Mountain disposal site. I ask, notwithstanding legislative or executive business or the provisions of rule XXII, immediately following completion of the Defense authorization bill but no later than July 9, the majority leader or the chairman of the Energy Committee be recognized in order to proceed to Calendar No. 412, S.J. Res. 34, and in accordance with the provisions of section 115 of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the Senate then vote on the motion, with no further intervening action or debate.

   I further ask that the motions be agreed to, the Senate consider the joint resolution under the statutory procedure set forth in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act; further, that once pending, the resolution remain before the Senate to the exclusion of any other legislative or executive business; and finally, upon conclusion of floor debate and a quorum call, if requested, as provided by the statute, the Senate vote on H.J. Res. 87 without further intervening motion, point of order, or appeal.

   Mr. DASCHLE. I object.

   Let me simply say, I reiterate what I have said on several occasions. As the Republican leader knows, a unanimous consent request in this case is not necessary. The statute allows any Senator to bring the bill to the floor and make a motion to proceed. It is not debatable. The vote occurs. If it is successful, the debate, under the statute, is required for a period no longer than 10 hours. Any Senator is capable of doing that.

   I object today simply because, of course, we have to finish our work on the Defense authorization bill. We are not sure yet what the circumstances will be with regard to the supplemental. I hate to have this legislation supplant an emergency supplemental dealing with our Armed Forces and

   dealing with the emergency needs of counterterrorism. That is exactly what this proposal would do. It would supplant it if that were the pending business. We are hopeful we can accommodate the priorities of the country and the Senate in a way that recognizes the importance of proper sequencing of legislation including the supplemental. As I say, it certainly also recognizes any Senator's right to bring it to the floor.

   I am personally very opposed to the Yucca Mountain legislation as is presented. I oppose it and urge my colleagues to oppose it as well. We have a large majority of our colleagues on this side of the aisle who oppose it. However, for that reason as well as for the procedural reasons I have just described, I do object.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Republican leader.

   Mr. LOTT. If I could use leader time to comment further, I understand why the Senator would object at this time. However, I make it clear to all the Senators on both sides of the aisle and both sides of the issue, we will make every effort to make Senators aware of when this issue might come up, give them maximum opportunity for the majority leader or the chairman of the Energy Committee to call up this issue, and also so that Members know when we are actually going to get to the issue itself.

   The way this is set up under expedited procedures, once we go to it, once the motion to proceed is agreed to, there will be 10 hours of debate and we will go to the final vote. I think that is the right scenario. However, I caution Senators, there is a deadline. Under the law there was a certain amount of time this legislation could be pending in the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and there was a certain specified period of time during which it could be available for the Senate to act. If we do not act by July 27, the veto of this issue by the Governor of the State involved will hold. The worst of all worlds would be not to act in a responsible way with a clear vote in the prescribed amount of time we have available. By going to this issue the first week we are back, everybody will know when to expect it to come up, and it will be assured that we get it done before the expiration date of July 27.

   We will continue to speak about the importance of this issue. We have been working on it many years, and we have spent an awful lot of taxpayers' money. It is time we make a decision and move forward with this repository.

   I am happy to yield to Senator Murkowski.

   Mr. MURKOWSKI. I certainly urge the two leaders to proceed and recognize the obligation we have to bring this matter to a vote. It would be a grave reflection on the Senate to not take up this matter prior to July 27. The House has done its work and spoken with an overwhelming vote in support of proceeding with Yucca. To allow this matter simply to die through inaction is a grave reflection on what was intended to be a balanced procedure, giving the Governor of the State of Nevada an opportunity to present the opinion of the State of Nevada, yet allowing for both the House and Senate to vote on the issue.

   I encourage the two leaders to give us the assurance that we would have an up-or-down vote, that it would simply not be allowed to die in the course of events that clearly are going to take a great deal of time and effort as we proceed with the calendar.

   July 27 is the drop dead date for the procedure, as the minority leader indicated. He will be forced to vote on the motion to proceed followed by 10 hours of debate and then the final disposition. I remind my colleagues of the fiscal responsibility we have in light of

[Page: S5986]

   honor the terms of that contract.

   The longer we delay this process--when I say ``delay,'' I am talking about just that: Proceeding with the process that would basically lead to a time sequence that would not allow us to dispose of this issue is irresponsible. As a consequence, I encourage the two leaders to give us the assurance that we will have an up-or-down vote, we will be allowed to have 10 hours of debate, prior to July 27. To not do that, indeed, would be a very grave and negative reflection of this body--simply ducking its responsibility.

   Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, it will be better if I yield the floor and allow the Senator to get time on his own so he will not have to think he is being inconsiderate of me by the time he takes.

   I yield the floor.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. CARPER). The Senator from Nevada.

   Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. President, I thank the majority leader for objecting today, and I appreciate his opposition to this project.

   The junior Senator from Alaska talked about an obligation to move this legislation. I think there is never an obligation to do the wrong thing.

   I believe that proceeding on the issue of Yucca Mountain would be the wrong thing for this country for several reasons. There are a lot of misconceptions when it comes to Yucca Mountain. It is said we have a contract with the utility companies. That is simply because this Congress decided to enact a law based on politics and not based on what the country actually needed.

   Over the time of studying Yucca Mountain, we have a process that has become extraordinarily expensive, so much so that during the 1980s they dropped two of the sites they were studying because the costs were out of sight. Now, in the late 1990s or early 2000, the costs are going out of sight again. The latest cost estimate for Yucca Mountain is close to $60 billion.

   That is as much money as the cost of all 12 of our aircraft carriers.

   The stated purpose is so we can make nuclear power more viable in the future, if we have a solution for the waste. I submit to my colleagues that Yucca Mountain will not make nuclear power more viable because of the expense.

   We talk about the trust fund, that the ratepayers are paying into this trust fund. They paid in approximately $11 billion. When you count interest on that money in these phony trust funds that we have set up the trust fund is somewhere around $17 billion. We have spent about $8 billion of that so far, $4 billion on Yucca Mountain, constructing Yucca Mountain.

   People have no idea. Because they go out there and see this very impressive hole in the ground, they think we are almost done. We have hardly even scratched the surface. It is a huge project, hugely expensive. It is going to come out of the general revenues. That means taxpayers across the country who do not have nuclear power in their States are going to be paying for Yucca Mountain for years and years into the future.

   I will close. It is talked about that any Senator can bring this legislation to the floor. That is true. It says right in the act that any Senator can bring this legislation to the floor. Under the rules of the Senate, any Senator can bring any legislation to the floor, but the precedent and the history and the tradition of the Senate is that only the majority leader brings legislation to the floor of the Senate. There have been five pieces of legislation that had similar language to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, where it specifically stated that any Senator could bring the legislation to the floor. However, in that history of those five pieces of legislation, three of them were brought to the floor by the majority leader, and regarding two of them, the majority leader actually got them not brought forward to be considered in the Senate.

   If somebody besides the majority leader brings this legislation to the floor, we are breaking with the traditions of the Senate. Because we do not have a Rules Committee that says how legislation will come to the floor in the Senate, the same way the House has a Rules Committee, I believe we are setting a very dangerous precedent for the majority.

   On this side of the aisle we happen to be in the minority right now. Someday we would like to be in the majority. I think it sets a dangerous precedent for us on this side of the aisle, if we are going to be in the majority someday, for this type of legislation to go forward without the majority leader bringing the bill to the floor. He has announced his opposition, and we appreciate that. But I remind my colleagues it is said, because this legislation is so important, that we need to set this kind of precedent; that people do not believe, because of the importance of this legislation, that we are setting that precedent.

   I say, to the contrary, there are a lot of pieces of legislation that we look at around here that we say are very important. If a majority of Senators get together, regardless of which side of the aisle they are on, and offer a motion to proceed, they can control the floor of the Senate and thereby become the majority in and of themselves.

   I thank the majority leader for the work he is doing in trying to defeat this legislation. My colleague from the State of Nevada, the senior Senator, has done yeoman work over the years, and I appreciate all his efforts. We are going to continue to fight this legislation, not just because we believe it is bad for our State but, more importantly, we believe this legislation is wrongheaded for the United States of America.

   I yield the floor.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Colorado.

   Mr. ALLARD. Mr. President, I wanted to speak to the Defense authorization bill and was curious as to whether we are back to regular order on the Defense authorization. We are back to regular order?

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is pending.

   Mr. ALLARD. Mr. President, I thank my subcommittee chairman on the Strategic Subcommittee on Armed Services for his leadership. On this particular subcommittee, we do not always see eye to eye, and I appreciate his willingness to reach out and work with us. I value our working relationship with my chairman on the subcommittee.

   There is certainly much in the committee bill I am able to support. One of my particular interests for several years has been the use of commercial imagery to help meet the Nation's geospatial and imagery requirements. I do not believe the Department of Defense has been aggressive enough either in crafting a strategy or in providing funding for this purpose.

   I am gratified that the committee bill includes a substantial increase for commercial imagery acquisition and some very helpful words in report language that I suspect will drive the Department toward establishing a sound relationship with the commercial imagery industry.

   I also appreciate the support of the new Department of Energy environmental cleanup reform initiative that will incentivize cleanup sites to do their important work faster and more efficiently. The accelerated cleanup initiative will reduce risk to the workers, communities, and the environment, shorten the cleanup schedule by decades, and save tens of billions of dollars over the life of the cleanup. The bill adds $200 million to this initiative, and I expect the Department of Energy will make tremendous strides.

   In both of these areas, I believe the bill makes excellent progress. However, early in the process of crafting this bill, I made it very clear that one of my top priorities was to assure that ballistic missile defense programs are adequately funded. I am deeply disappointed that the committee bill, by the margin of one single vote, reduces missile defense programs by more than $800 million. This represents an 11-percent decrease to the missile defense request for fiscal year 2003, a request, I might add, that was already less than what was appropriated for fiscal year 2002, by some $200 million.

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   I believe reductions of this magnitude are unjustified and will do deep and fundamental harm to the effort to develop and deploy effective missile defenses as efficiently as we can.

   In the wake of the events of September 11, I believe missile defense is more important than ever. As the Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet testified before our subcommittee, we don't have the luxury of choosing the threats to which we respond. Missile threats have a way of developing faster than we expect.

   I opposed the bill in committee because of these reductions, and I intend to support, as vigorously as I can, efforts on the floor to restore the funding. I am disappointed we could not find an acceptable compromise on this issue in committee, and I look forward to working with my chairman in a continuing effort to find an acceptable resolution to this disagreement.

   I yield the floor.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas.

   Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I rise to speak about the soon to be laid down amendment by Senator Warner on missile defense. This is a major topic for the body to consider. It is a major topic for the country. I want to address it from a number of different perspectives but primarily from the perspective of the threat we are facing in the international community today.

   We are seeing now what is taking place in Iran. I wish to draw special notice to what is occurring there. We are seeing terrorism being supported greatly from that country. We are seeing them supporting terrorist threats and terrorist efforts and funding and even providing arms to terrorists in a number of countries throughout the region. They are supporting it in Lebanon. They are supporting it in central Asia. They are developing the missile capacity in Iran.

   Iranian missile capacity has developed substantially now. They are expanding their sphere of influence to the extent of how far the delivery of their weaponry is that they can go with the missiles they have.

   Iran, as the President identified, is one of the countries comprising the axis of evil. They seek to do away with the Israeli State, they seek to expand substantially their threat in the region, and they are no friend of the United States. They also have no reservation whatsoever about using the weapons of mass destruction that they have, even targeted toward the United States.

   Here is a country that clearly means us harm. Here is a country that is developing and expanding its missile capacity. Here is a country that has some capacity for weapons of mass destruction already and is trying to obtain nuclear capacity, nuclear weapon capacity, which some countries believe they will have in the next several years. That is Iran.

   We see what is taking place in North Korea. North Korea has developed and has missile capacity. They have a missile with a substantial range of influence and threat. They share those with a number of other rogue regimes around the world. North Korea has weapons of mass destruction. We don't know about their nuclear capacity and development. They are probably trying to pursue it. That is a country that also means us harm. This is a nation that is a failed state.

   Our estimate is that over the last 5 to 7 years at least 1 million North Koreans have died of starvation. At the same time they are developing this massive missile and weapons capacity, there are people fleeing North Korea today. In the last week, we saw that there were 27 people, I believe, from North Korea seeking refuge in the embassies in China to get out of the repressive regime in North Korea. The state has failed. Buildings are collapsing in that state. When people are caught in that building, they get crushed. North Koreans are fleeing from that failed state. They are trying to get out.

   This country is maintaining a missile capacity that threatens a number of U.S. allies and could potentially in the near future threaten the United States.

   With both of these known examples in Iran and North Korea, why on Earth would not the United States develop a missile defense system when we know these threats are there?

   These are state sponsors of terror. By our own account, they are one of the seven countries that are state sponsors of terror. They are doing this financially, with weaponry, and by some accounts with their own officers. They are selling these missiles around the world, as we know is the case with North Korea.

   Why wouldn't the United States as rapidly as possible develop our missile defense capacity when we know this is taking place?

   The first order for our defense is to provide for the common defense. That is the reason we created the Federal Government.

   When we know these things are being developed by two countries that mean to do us harm, why would we not as rapidly as possible use our efforts to develop a missile defense system? Clearly, we should be doing this. This should be of the highest order for us. If one of these could reach U.S. shores--and they may be able to do so in the near future with the development of what is taking place in these two countries, and where they are offering to sell their missile capacity--it could cause enormous harm and death in America.

   They currently threaten a number of our allies. They would cause enormous death in those nations.

   We should be developing a missile defense system as fast as possible. Unfortunately, the Senate Defense authorization bill is hindering the effort with what is currently in the bill. That is why I am supporting Senator Warner's effort to amend this bill so we can move forward with a missile defense system on a very rapid basis.

   The bill which passed out of the Senate Armed Services Committee includes a $814.3 million reduction to the budget requested for ballistic missile defense. The Warner amendment would provide the authority to transfer up to $814 million within the request to be used for ballistic missile defense and DOD activities to combat terrorism, as the President determined. The administration supports this budget request and opposes the reductions put forward in the committee bill for the Missile Defense Program. This is a reasonable position

   for the administration to take given the needs that we have for missile defense. It is one we should support, and it is one for which we should be having a robust missile defense program moving forward.

   For my own State's perspective, this Warner amendment would restore $30 million to save a spot on the production lines for the second airborne laser aircraft. The acquisition of the second ABL aircraft is essential to the continuation of the program. The first aircraft, which I have seen, is a very impressive aircraft that I think is going to be used in not only missile defense but in other capacities as well.

   The Senate Armed Services Committee's version of the bill is not amended to include additional missile defense funding. Secretary Rumsfeld has stated that he will recommend to the President that he veto the fiscal year 2003 National Defense Authorization Act. That is from the Secretary of Defense--a recommendation to veto.

   The Missile Defense Program that was developed is a balanced effort to explore a range of technologies that will allow the United States to defend against the growing missile threat facing this country and our forces, friends, and allies.

   I just articulate two countries that we know of that are problematic.

   What if things occur in other countries? For instance, we are developing and should grow in our alliance and work with Pakistan. This is a very difficult country. What if President Musharraf is not successful and more radical elements take over in Pakistan? That is a country with both nuclear and missile capacity. This is not one of those far-flung possibilities. This is a very real possibility that could take place. We hope we are working against it. I support President Musharraf. This country is very supportive of him. He has done a lot of excellent work. Recently, he helped in reducing tensions between India and Pakistan.

   It is a very real possibility for which we should be preparing. If that eventuality happened, and the United States said, OK, now we need to build a missile defense system to offset what is taking place in someplace such as Pakistan, it is too late.

   According to Secretary Rumsfeld, the $814 million shortfall in funding

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   The amendment provides the President flexibility to determine which use of the funds is within the national interest. The funds could be corrected to meet any new terrorism threat that may evolve.

   The ballistic missile defense reductions in the bill are considerable and will impair the ability of the Department of Defense to move forward in its effort to develop and deploy effective missile defenses.

   The Warner amendment is consistent with the National Missile Defense Act of 1999, which passed the Senate, I remind the body, by a vote of 97 to 3--virtually unanimous--that set out a goal of deploying an effective missile defense for the territory of the United States as soon as technologically possible.

   That was the standard we put forward. With the Warner amendment, we could meet that. Without it, we will not. We will not have the funding necessary to meet what we can do technologically. There will be restrictions of what we can do.

   In addition, the National Missile Defense Act of 1999 set a goal of further negotiated reductions in nuclear weapons programs from Russia.

   The amendment provides the opportunity to make more rapid progress in developing and deploying effective missile defenses, a goal endorsed by 97 of our colleagues.

   The Warner amendment provides an offset based on anticipated inflation savings and will have no impact on other programs.

   Even though the Warner amendment would boost the bottom line of the bill, it is protected from a budget point of order because it would authorize discretionary spending--not mandatory spending.

   The amendment will keep the defense budget within the amount requested by DOD.

   We have a number of possibilities for harm that could come to the United States--possibilities of nuclear, radiological, chemical, or biological weapons capability. And we have possibilities that would be enormous disasters.

   We know the al-Qaida network is pursuing these means of destruction on the United States. U.S. intelligence uncovered rudimentary diagrams of nuclear weapons in an al-Qaida safehouse in Kabul. This year, the CIA reported that several of the 30 foreign terrorist groups and other nonstate actors around the world ``have expressed interest'' in obtaining biological, chemical, and nuclear arms. Such weapons of mass destruction can be delivered on ballistic missiles aimed at U.S. forces and our friends. We cannot let this happen.

   Today, our security environment is profoundly different than it was before September 11. Perhaps I should say it is not profoundly different, but we realize how incredibly vulnerable the United States is, and we should have realized that prior to September 11.

   The challenges facing the United States have changed from threat of a global war with the Soviet Union to the threat posed by emerging adversaries in regions around the world, including terrorism. In the wake of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, we need to look at the threat posed to us as a nation and how we should best utilize resources, which certainly includes an effective Missile Defense Program.

   For those reasons, I strongly support the amendment soon to be laid down by the Senator from Virginia, Mr. Warner.

   I yield the floor.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.

   Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I have been listening to the Senator from Kansas. He makes eminent sense. He demonstrates a frustration that we have been living through now for certainly the last 10 years.

   He mentioned the Missile Defense Act of 1999. There was an act that was passed. It was passed by a huge margin, and certainly was a veto-proof margin, so the President did sign it. But then, after that, we did not comply with the act. We have been living since--that was signed in 1999--outside the law in terms of taking the action to deploy ``as soon as technologically possible.'' I think the excuse that was used at that time was the ABM Treaty. I am very thankful that finally we have crossed that bridge and we have gotten that behind us.

   I have often looked back to 1972--and of course that was a Republican administration, and I am a Republican--when we had Henry Kissinger. And at that time they said: There are two superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States of America. The whole thrust of that was mutually assured destruction. You won't protect yourself; we won't protect ourselves. You shoot us, we will shoot you, and everybody dies, and everybody is happy.

   That was a philosophy that everybody believed at that time. That was not the world of today. Sometimes I look wistfully back to the cold war. We had two superpowers. At least there was predictability. We knew what they thought and what their capabilities were. That is not true today. We have a totally different world.

   Even Henry Kissinger, who was the architect of that plan, in 1996, said it is nuts to make a virtue out of our vulnerability. That is exactly what we have been doing.

   I regretted each time President Clinton vetoed the Defense authorization bill. I remember the veto message. It said: I will continue to veto any authorization bill or any bill that has money in it for a threat that does not exist--implying, of course, that the threat did not exist: A nuclear weapon, a warhead being carried by missile, hitting the United States of America. That was in 1995, his first veto.

   Yet when we tried to get our intelligence to come up with some accuracy as to when the threat would exist, the National Intelligence Estimate of 1995 was highly politicized and said we were not going to have this threat for another 15 years. At that very time our American cities were targeted by Chinese missiles. At that time, of course, that was classified. It is not classified anymore. The threat, nonetheless, was there.

   I share the frustration of my friend from Kansas. I have 4 kids and 11 grandkids. I look at the threat that is out there. I was very pleased when the Rumsfeld commission established, in 1997, that the threat was very real, the threat was imminent, and the long-range threat could emerge without warning.

   I was, as the years went by, trying to get some information to shock this institution and other institutions into the reality that the threat was imminent.

   I recall writing a letter to General Henry Shelton, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and asking him if he agreed with the Rumsfeld recommendations. He said the rogue state threat was unlikely, and he was confident the intelligence would give us at least 3 years' warning. This was at a time when we also included in this letter: Would you tell us when you think North Korea would have the capability of having a multiple-stage rocket? He said that that would be in the years to come. That was August 24, 1998. Seven days later, on August 31, 1998, North Korea launched a three-stage rocket that had the capability of reaching the United States of America.

   So all of that is going on right now. All of that has been

   happening. We are finally at the point where we are going to vote on something--the missile defense capability was taken out of the Defense authorization bill, and now we have an opportunity to put it back. Singularly, this is the most important vote of this entire year, giving us this capability to meet this threat that is out there.

   When I talk to groups, I quite often say--particularly when there are young people in the audience--I would like to see a show of hands as to how many of you saw the movie ``Thirteen Days.'' Of course, most of them saw it. I saw it. It was about the Cuban missile crisis in the early 1960s, how the Kennedy administration was able to get us out of that mess. All of a sudden we woke up one morning and found out cities were targeted by missiles, and we had no missile defense.

   In a way, the threat that faces us today is far greater than it was back in the 1960s because at least that was all from one island that you could take out, I believe, in 22 minutes. Now we are talking about missiles that are halfway around the world that, if deployed, would take some 35 minutes to

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   I often think about September 11 and the tragedy of the skyline of New York City when the planes came into the World Trade Center. It was a very sad day in our country's history. But I thought, what if that had been, instead of two airplanes in New York City, the weapon of choice of terrorists--in other words, a nuclear warhead on a missile. If that had been the case, then there would be nothing left in that picture of the skyline but a piece of charcoal, and we would not be talking about 2,000 lives; we would be talking about 2 million lives. It sounds extreme to talk this way, but that is the situation we are faced with right now.

   When you say, well, of course China is not going to do this, North Korea is not going to do this, and Russia is not going to do this--they are the ones that have a missile that can reach us--let's stop and realize--and it is not even classified--that China today is trading technology and trading systems with countries such as Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, so it does not have to be indigenous to be a threat. The threat is there whether they buy a system from someone else or whether they make it themselves.

   After the Persian Gulf war, Saddam Hussein said: If we had waited 10 years to go into Kuwait, the Americans would not have come to their aid because we would have had a missile to reach the United States of America.

   I suggest to you here it is, 10 years later. The threat is imminent. We are way past due in doing something about it. Today is a significant day when we can set out to do that, something that would defend America. That is the primary function of what Government is supposed to be doing. We have an opportunity to do that today.

   So I encourage all my colleagues, for the sake of all of their people whom they represent back home, and for the sake of my 4 kids and my 11 grandkids, let's get this thing started and pass the Warner amendment.

   I yield the floor.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.

   Mr. REED. Mr. President, this morning I had the opportunity to address the issue of missile defense from my perspective as the chairman of the Strategic Subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee.

   In the course of our deliberations over many months, with many hearings, hours of testimony, and more hours of briefings and staff contacts, we looked very closely at the proposed budget for missile defense this year by the Department of Defense. We supported many of their initiatives.

   We are recommending $6.8 billion of new funding for fiscal year 2003. But let me put that in a larger context. For fiscal year 2002, the Department of Defense estimates they have only spent $4.2 billion of previously authorized money, leaving approximately $4 billion of carryover funds for fiscal year 2003. So our recommendation, together with carryover funds, will give the Department of Defense more than $10 billion of available funding for fiscal year 2003.

   That is a staggering amount of money. It is the largest 1-year funding source for missile defense I think we have ever had in our history. It is the combination of not only what we authorize this year for fiscal year 2003, but what has been authorized and not spent for fiscal year 2002.

   Mr. ALLARD. Will the Senator from Rhode Island yield on that point?

   Mr. REED. I am happy to yield.

   Mr. ALLARD. My understanding is they actually did not get into the spending, because we were in session late last year, until the second quarter. So when you get into second-quarter spending on a full year's allocation, obviously you are not going to have the opportunity to spend all the dollars. It is not because the need is not there, it is just because we were in session so late last year, in December, and that is the reason those dollars that were budgeted did not get spent. I have all the confidence in the world we probably will catch up with that.

   Mr. REED. I thank the Senator, my colleague, the ranking member from Colorado, for that point. I do not disagree with that point, but I am making a different point, which I will make again; which is, regardless of what caused them not to spend the money last year, that money seems to be entirely available this year, together with our proposed funding level, and gives the Missile Defense Agency over $10 billion to spend on missile defense in fiscal year 2003. That is robust funding by any definition. The suggestion that we are cutting out the heart of funding for missile defense is, I think, erroneous.

   We are supporting very strongly a missile defense program, but we are not supporting it without looking carefully at its components and making tough choices about priorities of spending.

   That is why, as a result of our proposed reductions, we were able to move significant amounts of money into shipbuilding, which every Member of this body strongly recommends, commends, and supports. In addition, we were able to move some money into Department of Energy security for their nuclear facilities, which is very important. We also have, in fact, provided a bill that robustly supports missile defense.

   We did reduce the overall recommendation of the Department of Defense for missile defense, but we also added funds into specific missile defense programs which we believed were underfunded. For example, we added an additional $30 million for test and evaluation of missile defenses. One of the persistent criticisms of our missile development program is that they have not had realistic testing, that they have had tests but they didn't really represent in any meaningful way the type of actual environment in which the missiles must operate. We added additional resources. This is one of the recommendations of everyone who has looked at the Missile Defense Program.

   We have added $40 million for a new, powerful, sea-based radar for the Navy theater-wide system. Again, this is a system which General Kadish, director of the Missile Defense Agency, announced 10 days ago or so was a likely candidate for contingency deployment in the year 2004.

   That was not suggested or recommended by the administration, but we believed very strongly that an additional $40 million to develop this radar was key to developing the Navy theater-wide system which could be the major element of the sea-based system.

   We have also added $40 million for the Arrow missile defense system. That is a joint United States-Israeli program to develop and field--and it is far into the development phase--a theater missile system that will protect not only Israel but United States forces, too, because we hope we will emphasize interoperability as we go forward with the development of that system.

   Many colleagues have said the danger of terrorists obtaining missiles is acute in the Middle East, and we are putting more money into the system than was requested by the Department of Defense to ensure that our allies and our forces in that region have an effective missile screen. That is a plus--not a minus--that we added, that the administration did not request.

   We have also included $22 million for an airborne infrared system which could be used as a near-term, highly accurate detection and tracking system for national or theater missile defense. Again, this was not requested by the administration but supported and included by our deliberations at the committee level because we do in fact want to see an effective missile defense system fielded at an early time.

   Let me talk about some of the reductions we made. Before I get into details, we asked some basic questions: What are you going to spend the money for? What is the product? What do you want to buy? When do you plan on deploying such-and-such a system? Frankly, the answers we got were very vague, very ambiguous. The Missile Defense Agency seems to be in the process of redefining their role, which is incumbent upon this new agency. But in that phase of redefinition, they were not able to provide the kind of specific data we requested. In

   fact, in some cases they just plain refused to provide any really adequate information.

   One example is that in last year's authorization, we requested, required by law in the report language, that they report to us on the life-cycle costs of any system going into the engineering

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   We have to know these things. We have to make judgments about critical systems, not just missile systems, shipbuilding, the operational readiness of our land forces, our air forces. All of these are tough choices with scarce resources. At a minimum, we have to know how much these proposed systems will cost. In the case of missile defense, it is very difficult, if not sometimes impossible, to get that information.

   We looked at programs and expected they would be justified and detailed in concrete ways. Frankly, we found many programs that appeared to be duplicative, ill-defined, and conceptual in nature. And these programs were not inconsequential. We are not talking about a couple of million dollars to do a study, we are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars; in the case of the Navy theater-wide, $52 million to do a study of concepts for sea-based midcourse naval defense.

   So that was the approach we took: Look hard at all of these programs, with the purpose of trying to ensure that missile defense development goes forward but also to ensure we had resources for other critical needs of the Department of Defense.

   One of the areas that appeared to us to be the least well justified was the area of the BMD system cost--approximately $800 million--used, as they say, to integrate the multilayered BMD system. First, there are a couple of timing issues. The various components of this BMD system have not yet been decided. As a result, they have an awesome challenge to integrate components that have not been decided upon. That is just an obvious starting point. Again, there was not the clear-cut definition of what they were doing, and $800 million is a great deal of money to spend on simply contracting for consultants, engineers, and systems reviews, particularly when the architecture of the components is not yet established.

   We also found out, as we looked back at last year's authorization, which included a significant amount of money for this BMD system, that the Department of Defense, as of midway through the year, had only spent about $50 million. We were informed that throughout the course of the year they are expected to spend about $400 million, leaving about $400 million of resources in this one particular element, BMD systems, that is available for fiscal year 2003 spending. So even with our reduction in BMD systems, they will still have a significant amount of money, upwards of $1 billion, for fiscal year 2003, in this one category of BMD systems.

   Again, if you ask them what are they doing: We are integrating systems. We are planning, and we are thinking.

   All of that is very fair, but is that a sufficient justification for $1 billion when we have other pressing needs for national defense in this budget?

   As we go forward, we looked, again, very carefully, at all the different elements. We made adjustments that we thought were justified by the lack of clear program goals, by

   duplicative funding, poorly justified funding, and then we looked at other issues.

   For example, the THAAD Program. THAAD is a theater missile defense program that has been under development for several years. It had its problems years ago. It was, frankly, off course. One of the conclusions of the Welch panel that looked at the THAAD Program was that they were rushing to failure. They were trying to do too much too fast. They were abandoning the basic principles of developing a system, good requirements, moving forward deliberately, testing carefully. As a result, the program was in danger of being canceled. The program is back on track now, with better engineering, commitment by the contractors. They are moving forward.

   But what the administration would like to do now is to go ahead and purchase 10 extra missiles for the THAAD Program. The problem is that the first flight test for the THAAD is in fiscal year 2005. We fully fund this flight test, $895 million for the THAAD for developing the missile, for flight testing in 2005. But ask yourself, why would we buy 10 unproven missiles several years before the first flight test?

   The administration talks about a contingency deployment. That is nice, but the first real flight test is several years from now. And in a scarce, tough budgeting climate, why are you buying 10 extra missiles that appear to be unnecessary before they follow through with the first test flight. So we made a reduction of approximately $40 million for those extra missiles.

   Now, we also looked at some of the funding for what they described as boost phase experiments--$85 million. We found these very ill defined and conceptual. That is a lot of money for ``experiments,'' without other explanation.

   Then we looked at the proposal to buy a second airborne laser aircraft, $135 million. The airborne laser is an interesting system, designed to mount a laser in a 747 and use that to knock down a missile as it leaves the launch phase in its boost phase. It is very complicated technology, challenging just in the simple physics, let alone the hardware that you have to construct. I am told that the prototype laser is twice the size of a system that can fit on a 747. I am also told that the 747 that they are outfitting has yet to have been flown operationally in this capacity in a test.

   So you asks yourself, when you have not developed a laser, when you have not used it on the aircraft to actually engage targets, when you are working on basic optics problems and physics problems, why do we have to buy a second airplane in this year? When, for example, you have people complaining that the real chokepoint in our airplane fleet are tanker aircraft to support our ongoing operations. This is an example of expenditure we thought was unjustified. As a result, we suggested and recommended that there be reductions in this program.

   Now, I wish to mention one other point in conjunction with the airborne laser because I think it is important. One of the things we discovered in our deliberation was that the Department

   of Defense has not only totally revamped the Missile Defense Agency, but it is trying to give it an autonomy that exists for few, if any, other defense programs. It has effectively eliminated review of its activities by the JROC, which is chaired by the Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, the warfighters who eventually will use all this equipment. We believe, as with most other programs, that it is required for these people to have a say whether and how missile defense is being developed.

   We found out that the Joint Chiefs of Staff were not consulted about this budget that was submitted from the National Missile Agency for missile defense in general; that they did not have an opportunity to say you are spending too little or too much. They were frozen out. Those are the senior uniform leaders of our Armed Forces and they didn't get a say in determining what should be spent on missile defense.

   As we develop these systems, we have to think, even at this point, how are we going to use these systems? The airborne laser has real potential in a tactical situation where you are going against theater missiles. If it is going to be used in a national missile situation, where we are trying to back down an aggressor that threatens us with an intercontinental missile launch, a couple issues should be considered: first, this is a 747 doing circles close to the airspace of a hostile nation. If we believe they have the capacity and the will to shoot an intercontinental missile at us, we have to assume they have the capacity and the will to knock down a 747 as it circles in the air waiting for the blastoff. So our first reaction militarily, I think, would be that we would have to dominate the airspace, send our fighters in to preempt the attack so they won't have to send the 747. Why don't we preempt the launch by attacking?

   These are some of the operational issues that are being addressed. All we are speaking about here is technological possibilities, but until they are integrated in with the coherent advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and JROC, the weight of that advice and of these proposals, I think, has to be questioned. That is our job.

   Now, we spent a great deal of careful time reviewing all of these systems. As

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   The midcourse, the land-based national defense system in Alaska, has been robustly funded. A few days ago the administration announced that a test bed has been started in Alaska for five missiles. That is fully supported in this legislation that we bring to the floor--even though there are real questions about its utility for anything more than a test bed, or even for a test bed.

   A contingency deployment would be likely directed against those nations identified as the ``evil empire.'' It turns out that the radar that the system being used in Alaska, the COBRA DANE radar, does not face in the direction of Iraq and Iran. It would be impossible to track those missiles. It has partial coverage of North Korea, but it would be difficult to cover with that radar. The administration has rejected a proposal supported under the Clinton administration to build an X-band radar in conjunction with the Alaska test bed. One of the

   reasons that the X-band radar was so important was indicated by General Kadish and others in their testimony.

   One of the real challenges for a midcourse interception is to identify the warhead from all of the clutter, including decoys that would likely be launched. To do that, you have to have a finely discriminating radar. The X-band is much more finely discriminating than the L band, which is COBRA DANE. The administration says forget that, we are not doing that. Yet we have funded this proposal fully because we recognize that the X-band radar is an important aspect of defending the country. Yet we also recognize we don't have a blank check. We have to make tough judgments about what we spend.

   So the idea that we are sort of blithely cutting programs and eviscerating missile defense is, I think, wrong on its face. There is $6.8 billion in this year, coupled with almost $4 billion of funds, that can be used from this year, meaning the fiscal year 2003 budget, coupled with almost $4 billion still available from the fiscal year 2002 budget, is robust funding for missile defense.

   My last point is something that I think is important to emphasize in the context of not just this program, but the overall challenge we have. When Secretary Rumsfeld came up to the Appropriations Committee to argue for the cancellation of the Crusader system, he made the point--which I think in his mind was very clear--that we face a defense bow wave of epic proportions as we go forward. If we fund all the programs that we are proposing right now, we are going to have some very hard choices. One of the problems with Secretary Rumsfeld's evaluation is it doesn't go as far as I think it should because, as far as I know, he is not including the cost of the deployment or operation of any missile defense system in the bow wave.

   As we consider the long-term implications, we must consider that we cannot just add funds. We have to be careful about it, and we have to be very careful about what these funds will be used for. We have done a very thorough, detailed review of these programs. We have made suggestions based upon the review. There are other pressing needs. The most glaring to me is homeland defense and antiterrorism expenditures.

   There, the possibility for extra spending probably exists. Here I think we have made sound choices about priorities that will help enhance the defense of the country. I urge my colleagues to consider carefully the proposals that Senator Levin might make but ultimately to, I hope, agree that the bill we brought to the floor contains robust spending that will enhance our defense through wise expenditures with respect to missile defense.

   I yield the floor.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority whip.

   Mr. REID. Mr. President, the two managers of the bill are two of the most experienced legislators we have on Capitol Hill, and so I have absolute confidence in both of them. They certainly know how to handle legislation. I have to say, though, it is 4 o'clock. It is Tuesday. We have the July recess coming up soon. I do not know what the leader will do, but I suggest to the leader that he should file cloture on this bill because it is obvious to me we are not going to be finished with this bill tomorrow, and I think we are going to have trouble finishing the bill on Thursday.

   The decision is that of the majority leader, but I say to my two dear friends, the senior Senator from Michigan and the senior Senator from Virginia, the manager and ranking member of this most important committee, that would be my recommendation to the leader, that he file a cloture motion sometime this afternoon. It seems to me that is the only way we are going to finish this bill.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.

   Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, last night I provided Chairman LEVIN with a draft of my missile defense amendment and then we discussed it at length this morning. At approximately 2:35 or 2:40, the Senator provided me with a proposal the Senator from Michigan had. So he had my amendment for a number of hours. I have only had his for about an hour and 30 minutes.

   I have a lot of people with strong beliefs over on my side, and it seems to me it is not unreasonable given the amount of time that I was able to provide for the chairman and the leadership on his side, that I would require just a bit more time to resolve good, honest differences of opinion on my side.

   Mr. REID. I am wondering if I could ask my friend from Virginia and my friend from Michigan, maybe we should go to some other amendment then?

   Mr. WARNER. I ask the indulgence of my good friend to enable me to work a bit and see whether or not we can proceed to a clear understanding for a procedure such that the Senate can address the views of the chairman and the views of the ranking member.

   Mr. REID. As I said when I started this statement this afternoon, I have the greatest confidence in the two managers of this bill. That being the case, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

   The senior assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.

   Mr. ALLARD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

   The Senator from Colorado.

   Mr. ALLARD. Mr. President, I want to make a few comments in response to my colleague's comments earlier about trying to justify the cuts they had in various parts of the Missile Defense Program.

   I rise in support of the amendment that is going to be offered by the ranking Republican in the Armed Services Committee, Senator Warner, and myself, where we are restoring $814 million for missile defense and activities of the Department of Defense to combat terrorism at home and abroad. This is an important amendment. It will allow the bill to move forward on a bipartisan basis, and I believe it deserves the support of every Member of this body.

   The committee bill dramatically reduces the President's funding request for missile defense. This bill actually makes a billion dollars in reduction and then adds back to the ballistic missile defense budget in areas where the funding was not requested. I confess that I am baffled and deeply disappointed that the committee majority insisted on these reductions.

   The missile defense request this year was both reasonable and modest, in my view. At $7.6 billion, it was less than the request for fiscal year 2002 by about $700 million and less than what was appropriated in fiscal year 2002 by $200 million. If the committee bill is enacted, missile defense will be funded a billion dollars below last year's funding level.

   Many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle can accept this because they look at missile defense as a

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   Let us examine this point of view. The contention that a missile attack is the least likely threat the Nation will face is simply false on the face of it. Ballistic missiles pose the most likely threat that we must face. Indeed, we face it today and every day. Missiles and weapons of mass destruction are meant to deter. I know our colleagues on the other side of the aisle believe this. They have often argued that our own nuclear force levels are too high and that effective deterrence does not require that many weapons.

   According to the latest national intelligence estimate on missile threats, our Nation faces a likely intercontinental ballistic missile threat from Iran and North Korea and a possible threat from Iraq. Dozens of nations have short- and medium-range ballistic missiles already in the field that threaten U.S. interests, military forces, and our allies. The clear trend in ballistic missile technology is toward longer range and greater sophistication. Once deployed, these missiles threaten the United States, its allies, its friends, and deployed troops. No one has to fire them to be effective. They are effective by their mere presence.

   The most recent national intelligence estimate concludes that nations hostile to U.S. interests are developing these capabilities precisely to deter the United States. We already know that our adversaries believe we can be deterred from pursuing our interests. Earlier this year, the Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee received some remarkable testimony from Mr. Charles Duelfer in his capacity as the Deputy Executive Chairman of the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq. He had the opportunity to interview senior Iraqi Ministers about Saddam Hussein's perception of the gulf war. Many of us are aware that the United States threatened Iraq with extraordinary regime-ending consequences should that nation use chemical or biological weapons against coalition forces during the conflict. The use of this threat has been seen as a triumph of deterrence, but according to Mr. Duelfer, Iraq loaded chemical and biological warheads on ballistic missiles.

   Authority to launch those missiles was delegated to local commanders with no further intervention or control by higher Iraqi authorities with orders to launch if the United States moved on Baghdad.

   We never attacked Baghdad. The Iraqi regime survived and survives this day, and they attribute that survival to the deterrent effect of missiles and weapons of mass destruction.

   Furthermore, the national intelligence estimate also concludes that the likelihood that a missile with a weapon of mass destruction will be used against U.S. forces or interests is higher today than during most of the cold war and will continue to grow as the capabilities of potential adversaries mature.

   We have had testimony from many witnesses this year attesting to the seriousness of the threat. General Thomas Schwartz, then the Commander in Chief of U.S. Forces Korea, told the Armed Services Committee:

   As a result of their specific actions, North Korea continues to pose a dangerous and complex threat to the peninsula and the WMD and missile programs constitute a growing threat to the region and the world.

   And Admiral Dennis Blair, the Commander in Chief of Pacific Command, testified that he is ``worried about the missiles that China builds . . . which threaten Taiwan and ..... about the missiles which North Korea builds ..... to threaten South Korea and Japan.'' General Richard Meyers, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a letter to me dated May 7, 2002, wrote that ``the missile threat facing the United States and deployed forces is growing more serious . . . Missiles carrying nuclear, biological or chemical weapons could inflict damage far worse than was experienced on September 11.''

   In light of the consistency of views expressed by our intelligence community and our military commanders, I just cannot fathom the point of view that disregards the missile threat. And yet we hear that other priorities, such as homeland security, are so much higher than missile defense that deep reductions to funding for missile defense are justified. Let us put this view in perspective as well.

   First of all, I would note that missile defense is, quintessentially, homeland defense. Defenses against long-range missiles will protect our people and our national territory, our shores and harbors, our cities, factories, and farmlands from the world most destructive weapons. Defenses against shorter range missiles will protect our allies and our deployed forces that are fighting for our freedom.

   Secondly, approving the missile defense budget request will not impair military readiness. General Meyers recently wrote to me he fully endorsed the President's missile defense request, and stated unequivocally that ``military readiness will not be hurt if Congress approves the . . . President's budget.''

   Third, I would note that the missile defense program is not a single program activity. The $7.6 billion request funds about 20 sizable projects in the Missile Defense Agency and the Army.

   Finally, the missile defense request is a modest one when you realize the magnitude of other defense efforts. The missile defense request for fiscal year 2003 is $7.6 billion. This is a mission we have never done before. In essence, we have almost no legacy capability. Contrast that with the more than $11 billion we will spend on three tactical aircraft programs in 2003. We will probably spend about $350 billion on these three programs over their lifetime. And we have tremendous legacy capabilities in this area. Our tactical aircraft are today the best in the world. Another example: We will spend close to $40 billion in 2003 on other homeland security programs. These are all important programs and address vital national security needs. But in light of the size of these programs, the view that the missile defense request is wildly excessive or out of line is misleading at best.

   Consequently, I believe, as does the President, the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and the theater commander in chief, that the missile defense budget request is fair and reasonable. In combination, these reductions represent a frank and potentially devastating challenge to the administration's missile defense goals and how the Department has organized itself to achieve those goals.

   The administration established the Missile Defense Agency and expedited oversight processes. The committee bill would cut literally

   hundreds of government and contractors employees that work at the Agency's headquarters and for the military services that serve as executive agents for missile defense programs. These are the people who provide information technology, services, security, contract management and oversight for missile defense projects, and they are vital to good management.

   The administration seeks early deployment of missile defense capabilities. The committee bill eliminates funds that could provide capabilities for contingency deployment.

   The Missile Defense Agency established a goal of developing multi-layered defense capable of intercepting missiles of all ranges in all phases of flight. The committee bill reduces or eliminates funding for boost phase intercept systems and cuts funding for defenses against short, medium, and intermediate range missiles by more than $500 million.

   The Missile Defense Agency established a goal of developing a single integrated missile defense system. MDA established a government-industry National Team to select the best and brightest from industry to determine the best overall architecture and perform system engineering and integration and battle management and command control work for the integrated missile defense system. The committee bill reduces by two-thirds funding for BMD system SE&I and BM/C2 and virtually eliminates funding for the National Team.

   The amendment offered by Senators WARNER, LOTT, STEVENS, and I could potentially restore the $814 million net reduction to missile defense and reverse these unjustified committee actions. We all recognize, however, that missile defense is part of the larger picture of homeland defense. This amendment provides the flexibility to the

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   I personally believe that the President would be completely justified in using the funding for missile defense. But to comfortably with the idea that President can direct these funds according to the Nation's needs as he sees them. If the terrorist threat should take an unexpected turn, these funds could be valuable in the effort to assure that a new threat can be contained. If such is not the case, he can direct the funds to missile defense.

   I believe that this is a reasonable and fair compromise that will allow the bill to move forward on a bipartisan basis. The gap between the two sides on the missile defense issue is substantial. I recognize that. This amendment is an honest and fair attempt to bridge that gap in a manner that can satisfy both sides. I urge my colleagues to support this important amendment.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. JOHNSON). The Senator from Mississippi.

   Mr. COCHRAN. I compliment the distinguished Senator from Colorado for his statement. He is a member of the Armed Services Committee which reported this bill to the Senate. He has been a leader in the effort to develop and deploy an effective national missile defense system.

   I strongly support the effort being made by Senator Warner, the ranking Republican on this committee, to amend the bill, to authorize appropriations as requested by the President, for missile defense. It is clear to me that the reductions to that program contained in this bill are designed to prevent the successful development of effective missile defenses. The reductions proposed in the committee bill obviously have been carefully selected to do the maximum amount of damage to the President's plan to modernize these programs. These reductions do not trim fat. They cut the heart out of our missile defense effort.

   The President has embarked on a fundamental transformation of these programs which was made possible by the withdrawal from the ABM Treaty. That treaty had led to restrictions on our efforts to develop technologies to conduct tests and to develop effective missile defense capabilities. The treaty outlawed promising basing modes, and it imposed stringent curbs on the types of technologies we could use to defend ourselves against missile attack.

   The President plans to transform the separate missile defense programs into an integrated missile defense system which makes the most of the progress we have already made but which is supplemented with new capabilities and new technologies such as the ability to destroy missiles in their boost phase and to base missile defenses at sea. The President's budget request begins to make this transformation a reality.

   The committee bill, on the other hand, cuts $362 million from the request for the ballistic missile defense system,

   under which fundamental engineering that is necessary to achieve this goal will be undertaken. This cut will eliminate two-thirds of the funding for system engineering and integration, and virtually eliminate the national team which would integrate the various system elements.

   The report accompanying the bill erroneously claims that these efforts are redundant with system engineering performed in the individual programs. This is not the case. The engineering work this bill would eliminate is both distinct and vital.

   The bill also cuts $108 million from program operations, again on the erroneous assumption that this effort is redundant. In fact, according to the Missile Defense Agency, if this cut stands, 70 percent of the civilian workforce at the Agency would be eliminated.

   The bill also guts the efforts to exploit new technologies and basing modes which previously were prohibited, as I said, in the ABM Treaty, but which we may now pursue. For example, $52 million is cut from the sea-based midcourse program. That program had a successful intercept just last week, its second in two attempts. But this bill would reduce funds for testing and delay our ability to build on the recent successes.

   The airborne laser program, which will provide the United States not only its first airborne missile defense system but the first to use a directed energy weapon, it is reduced by $135 million in this committee bill, leaving the program with only one aircraft.

   And the cuts go on: $55 million from the sea-based boost phase work; $30 million from space-based boost; $10 million from the space-based laser. All of these cuts would severely hamper or eliminate work on promising new basing modes or new technologies, just as we have been freed by the withdrawal from the ABM Treaty to fully undertake our research and investigations.

   The bill also cuts efforts for which even longtime defenders of the ABM Treaty and missile defense critics have always professed support. For example, critics have said that our missile defenses need more testing, and outside experts have agreed with that.

   So what have they done in this bill? Eliminated 10 test missiles from the THAAD Program--not named for me. This is the THAAD--Theater High Altitude Air Defense is what it stands for--Program.

   Year after year, the generals in charge of our Missile Defense Program have testified that their testing has been ``hardware poor.'' They did not have enough of the missiles that they needed, the test missiles. They have had so little test hardware that when something goes wrong, as inevitably and occasionally is going to happen in a test program, they are forced to bring the program to a stop while they look for other hardware or try to deal with the problem in some other way.

   Congress has been asked by this administration to provide more hardware so that testing can continue when problems develop so that these problems can be corrected. General Kadish has called this ``flying through failure.'' You have to keep testing to find out how to solve the problems, and many of our efforts along this line have been successful and problems have been solved.

   We have seen test after successful test in not only the THAAD Program that we mentioned, but in the longer range higher velocity missile test programs.

   But this bill cuts from the THAAD Program 10 flight test

   missiles that will help ensure our ability to fly through failure and keep the program on track.

   In the past, opponents have also criticized the program generally as being too risky--which means there is a lot of chance for failure. It doesn't mean that it is risky in that it will not work, it is that you will have failures along the line. But if you go back in the history of our Defense Department and look at new product development--the Polaris Missile is an example or the Sidewinder Missile is an example--they had more failures by far in those early days of testing than these missile defense programs have had. So failures are expected.

   But the good news is that we are making very impressive progress. Now, right on the brink of the transformation of the programs into a modernized, fully authorized program, this committee goes through and cuts out just enough--and in some cases more than enough--of certain activities that are involved in the integrated Missile Defense Program to guarantee its failure, to guarantee that we will not be able to succeed in deploying an effective missile defense to protect the security of Americans here at home.

   While applauding homeland defense as a necessity, we are, on the one hand, saying it is a good idea and saying we are going to work with the President to make that be an effective way to defend ourselves more effectively than we have in the past, and then, on the other hand, eliminating authorization for funds that are absolutely essential for an effective missile defense program.

   They cut $147 million from the midcourse defense segments. The committee eliminated funding for the complementary exoatmospheric kill vehicle, which would reduce the risk of relying on the single design now being tested.

   Opponents have claimed that missile defenses will be vulnerable to countermeasures. But guess what. This bill takes the funding away from testing against countermeasures. Can you believe that? I have read article after article in papers, the Union of Concerned Scientists saying: Well, missiles can hit a missile in full flight. But if there

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   We have proven in tests over the Pacific that it can be done, that the intercept missile has differentiated between the missile and the decoy. Then the scientists say: Oh, but that was just one decoy. It was not sophisticated. What if a potential enemy deploys a lot of decoys?

   Here the administration plans to do just that as it gets more sophisticated and proves that one thing can work, and how complicated can an enemy be--we will find out whether we can defend against that. But they cut the money so we can't do that. The opponents of the missile defense effort are playing right into the hands of the critics. I guess next they will say there is no money for the additional decoys and the countermeasures. Of course there isn't. They took the money out of the bill.

   I am hopeful Senators will look at the details and not just assume, OK, the Democrats think the President is spending too much on missile defense, the Republicans want to spend more.

   We are trying to support the President. At a time when our country is under threat from terrorists, we are confronted with nation states building more sophisticated intercontinental ballistic missile capability, testing those missiles, as North

   Korea did and as other nation states are doing. And you can get the intelligence reports. We get them routinely, on a regular basis. And we have public hearings on those that can be discussed publicly.

   In those hearings it has become abundantly clear that there is a proliferation of missile technology in the world today and a lot of nation states that say they are out to destroy us and to kill Americans wherever they can be found are building these systems and testing these systems.

   We need to proceed to support our President in this legislation. Of all times to start nitpicking a request for missile defense and go about it in the way that is undertaken in this bill and say: We have left a lot of money here for missile defense. The President has asked for billions--for $7 billion. We just have taken out less than a billion, $800 million.

   But look where the money is coming from. The money that is being taken away from the programs is designed to prevent the full-scale development of a modern missile defense capability. That is the result if the Senate does not adopt an amendment to change these reductions, to eliminate these reductions and give the President what he is asking for. And that is a capability to integrate all of the systems into one engineering and development program, for efficiency sake--for efficiency, to save money in the long run so we will not have to have redundant engineering programs. We won't have to have engineering contracts to the private sector. We will not have to have redundant contracts with the private sector. We can bring it all together and have a layered system that would be a lot more efficient and a lot more effective.

   There is more to this than politics. We are talking about a threat to our Nation's security, to the livelihood and well-being of American citizens, to American troops in the field, and to the ships at sea in dangerous waters and in dangerous areas of this world today.

   Is this Senate about to take away the opportunity to defend those assets, those resources, our own citizens, our own troops, and our own sailors? I am not going to be a part of that.

   This Senate needs to hear the truth. The truth is looking at the details of the proposal that this committee is making to the Senate. Don't let them do this. We will pay dearly for it in the years ahead by having to appropriate more money than we should for individual programs or in catastrophes that could have been avoided.

   As I said, opponents have claimed that missile defenses will be vulnerable to countermeasures, yet the reductions in this bill eliminate funding for counter-countermeasure work that would address this problem.

   One could be forgiven for concluding that the goal here is not to improve the missile defense system, but to ensure it is continually vulnerable to criticism.

   In the past, disagreements about missile defense in the Senate have been largely over whether to defend the territory of the United States, and then mostly because such defenses were prohibited by the ABM Treaty. At the same time, there has been near unanimous support for missile defense capabilities that will protect our troops deployed overseas. Yet, this bill would take hundreds of millions of dollars from our theater missile defense programs, even as our troops are deployed in what we all acknowledge will be a long military effort in a part of the world that is saturated with ballistic missiles. It is both baffling and troubling that the Armed Services Committee would so severely reduce funding for these programs--at any time, but especially now.

   For example, the revolutionary Airborne Laser Program is reduced by $135 million, restricting the capability to just one aircraft. Having two or more aircraft means that one can be grounded for service or upgrading without losing the capability altogether. But with a single aircraft, this important theater defense capability will be unnecessarily constrained.

   The THAAD Program will provide the first ground-based defense against longer-range theater missiles like North Korea's No Dong and its derivatives, such as Iran's Shahab-3. The No Dong is already deployed--our troops in Korea and Japan are threatened by it today, but this bill cuts funding for THAAD by $40 million.

   The Medium Extended Air Defense System--or MEADS--is a cooperative effort with Italy and Germany to field a mobile theater missile defense system; it is reduced by $48 million.

   The sea-based midcourse program--formerly known as Navy Theater Wide--will provide the first sea-based capability to shoot down missiles like the No Dong. The program had its second successful intercept attempt just last week, but this bill would cut the program by $52 million.

   The Space-Based Infrared--or SBIRS-Low--Program will provide midcourse tracking of both theater and intercontinental missiles. The program has just been restructuring by the administration, but this bill's reduction of $55 million will force it to be restructured again, further delaying this essential capability.

   The arbitrary cuts to the systems engineering efforts and the program operations of the Missile Defense Agency will fall just as heavily on theater missile defense programs as on our efforts to defend against long-range missiles. Altogether, some $524 million of the missile defense reductions contained in this bill fall on our efforts to defend against the thousands of theater ballistic missiles our deployed troops face today. This is irresponsible and unconscionable.

   This bill isn't just micromanagement of the missile defense program, it is micro-mismanagement. The reductions contained in this bill have been carefully tailored to undermine the missile defense program and compromise its effectiveness. If the general in charge of the program tried to manage it the way this bill does, he would be fired.

   President Bush's courageous act of withdrawing from the ABM Treaty has freed our Nation--for the first time in over three decades--to pursue the best possible technologies to protect our citizens and deployed troops from missile attack. If allowed to stand, the reductions contained in this bill would squander that opportunity by crippling the efforts to transform our missile defense program in ways impossible until now. The Senate should reject these irresponsible cuts and give the President a chance to make this program work. I urge Senators to support the Warner amendment.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.

   Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, the United States completed its withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty on June, 13, 2002, and the Pentagon has shifted into high gear its efforts to deploy a rudimentary anti-missile system by 2004. The drivers of this missile defense hot-rod are doing their best to make it look as good as possible, and they are spreading the word of its latest successes on the test track.

   But I am not alone in wondering what this vehicle, with its $100 billion purchase price, really has under the

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   As part of its normal oversight duties, the Armed Services Committee has requested from the Department of Defense information relating to cost estimates and performance measures for various components of the missile defense research program that is underway. This kind of information is essential to allowing Congress to render its own assessment of whether these programs are on-budget and meeting expectations.

   As the Armed Services Committee began hearings on the fiscal year 2003 Defense budget request in February 2002, we requested basic information from the Department of Defense on its proposed missile defense program. We asked for cost estimates, development schedules, and performance milestones. But the committee has not received the information. It is as though the Department of Defense does not want Congress to know what we are getting for the $7.8 billion in missile defense funds that were appropriated last year.

   On March 7, 2002, at an Armed Services Committee hearing, I questioned the Pentagon's chief of acquisition, Under Secretary Pete Aldridge, about the delays in providing this information to Congress. He answered my questions with what I believed was an unequivocal statement that he would make sure that Congress gets the information it needs.

   Three and a half months later, we still have not received the information that we requested. It also seems that the Pentagon is developing a new aspect of its strategy in its consultations with Congress and the American people. On June 9, 2002, The Los Angeles Times ran an article entitled, ``Missile Data To Be Kept Secret.'' The Washington Post ran a similar story on June 12, ``Secrecy On Missile Defense Grows.'' The two articles detail a decision to begin classifying as ``secret'' certain types of basic information about missile defense tests.

   These missile defense tests use decoys to challenge our anti-missile system to pick out and destroy the right target, which would be a warhead hurtling toward the United States at thousands of miles per hour. According to the newspaper articles, the Pentagon will no longer release to the public descriptions of what types of decoys are used in a missile defense test to fool our anti-missile radars. This information will be classified.

   Independent engineers and scientists who lack security clearances will have no means to form an opinion on the rigor of this aspect of missile defense tests. No longer will the experts outside the government be able to make informed comments on whether a missile defense test is a realistic challenge to a developmental system, or a stacked deck on which a bet in favor of our rudimentary anti-missile system is a sure winner.

   I do not think that it is a cooincidence that independent scientists have criticized the realism of past missile defense tests because the decoys used were not realistic. I cannot help but be left with the impression that the sole reason for classifying this kind of basic information is to squelch criticism about the missile defense program.

   Should this basic information about our missile defense program be protected by the cloak of government secrecy? If the tests are rigorous and our anti-missile system is meeting our expectations, would it not be to our advantage to let our adversaries know how effective this system will be?

   But perhaps this national missile defense system is not progressing as rapidly as hoped. Then would it not be to our advantage to encourage constructive criticism in order to improve the system? In either case, I cannot see how these secrecy edicts will promote the development of a missile defense system that actually works.

   The bottom line is that Congress and the American people must know whether the huge sums that are being spent on missile defense will increase our national security. Since September 11, we have been consumed with debates about homeland security. What is this system intended to be but a protection of our homeland?

   Do we believe that American people can be entrusted with information about their own security? I certainly think so. Without a doubt, we need to carefully guard information that would compromise our national defense, but public scrutiny of our missile defense

   program is not an inherent threat to our security.

   In April, the Appropriations Committee heard testimony from a number of people with expertise in homeland security. We heard many warnings about the peril of losing public trust in our Government. No matter if the threat is terrorists with biological weapons or rogue states with missiles, we must not jeopardize the trust of the American people in their Government. If the missile defense system does not work as it is supposed to do, and we hide its shortcomings inside ``top secret'' folders and other red tape, we will be setting ourselves up for a sure fall. We ought to have more, not fewer, independent reviews of our antimissile system.

   So I oppose the amendment to increase missile defense funding in this bill by $812 million. The Department of Defense has shown it is more than willing to delay and obfuscate details about what it is doing on missile defense, and I cannot understand the logic of increasing funds for an antimissile system that is the subject of greater and greater secrecy. It does not make sense to devote more money to a system of questionable utility before there is a consensus of independent views that an antimissile system is technologically feasible. The missile defense system that we are developing needs more scrutiny, not more secrecy, more assessment, not more money.

   In the next few days, the Senate will vote on this bill and authorize billions of dollars in missile defense funds. While the Pentagon will continue to portray these programs as a hot rod that is speeding toward success, one thing is certain: this hot rod is running on almost $8 billion in taxpayer money this year. Talk about a gas guzzler! If Congress is not allowed to kick the tires, check the oil and look under the hood, this rig could fall apart and leave us all stranded.

END

3A) Connecting the Dots on Iraq
Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, over the last several weeks, a number of revelations have surfaced about how our intelligence agencies failed to analyze and connect the pieces of information that they obtained. According to these news accounts, while the September 11 attacks were a shock to the American people, they may not have been a total surprise to the intelligence arms of our Government.

   While there is no smoking gun to indicate that the FBI, the CIA, or anyone else or any other agency knew the totality of the September 11 plot before it was carried out, it now seems fairly clear that there were known pieces of information, which, if thoroughly and properly analyzed, could have put our Government on a higher state of alert for a major terrorist attack upon the United States.

   President Bush himself has acknowledged that our intelligence agencies were not connecting the dots that would have prepared our homeland for a devastating act of terrorism. In partial response, the President has proposed the creation of a Department of Homeland Security with a new bureau that is intended to sort through the intelligence reports and hopefully connect the dots that are sometimes overlooked or unappreciated by the FBI and/or CIA. The proposal has some merit. However, I am troubled with the manner in which this and other proposals are being crafted by the administration. Shrouded often in ambiguity and cloaked often in deep secrecy, this administration continues suddenly to sometimes unexpectedly drop its decisions upon the public and Congress, and then expect obedient approval without question, without debate, and without opposition.

   The Senate is not like that. We scrutinize, we debate, we ask questions.

   For months, the President has been sending signals that U.S. efforts to topple Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq will involve direct military action. In his State of the Union address on January 29, 2002, the President listed Iraq as a member of an ``axis of evil'' that seeks to attack the United States with acts of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. The President punctuated his bold words with a warning that he ``will not wait on events, while dangers gather,'' and that ``the United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons.''

   That is saber rattling. This saber rattling prompted many questions for the American public, for Members of Congress, and for our allies. The question being: Will we invade Iraq? When will it happen? Will the United States go it alone? These are some of the questions.

   On February 12, 2002, during a Budget Committee hearing, I questioned the Secretary of State about the administration's designs on Iraq. Unfortunately, the answers I got were not sufficiently clear to put to rest my questions. Secretary of State Powell stated that the President had ``made no decisions about war.''

   Now, Mr. President, when I was in a two-room school in Algonquin, WV, in 1923, I could read through that answer. That should not require the mind of a genius to interpret.

   Secretary Powell stated that the President had ``made no decisions about war.'' So my question remained unanswered.

   The Secretary, for whom I have a great deal of respect and with whom I have been associated for many years in several difficult decisions that have arisen over those years, the Secretary of State also stated that he--meaning the President--``has no plan on his desk right now to begin a war with any nation.''

   I go back to that two-room schoolhouse in Algonquin in southern West Virginia. I can figure that out. That is not answering the question. Everybody knew it. The Secretary of State knew it. He did not intend to answer that question. While I have a great deal of respect for Secretary Powell, his answers provided more in the way of qualifications and confusion than in the pursuance of clarity.

   Earlier this month, President Bush added another dimension to our national security policy. On June 1, 2002, he addressed the cadets at West Point on the progress of the war on terrorism. In his remarks, the President argued that deterrence and containment by themselves are not enough to fight terrorism. He said, ``In the world we have entered, the only path to safety is the path of action.'' And he urged Americans ``to be ready for preemptive action when necessary.''

   In order to be ready for such action, the President said that the U.S. military ``must be ready to strike at a moment's notice in any dark corner of the world.''

   According to a Washington Post article on June 10, the National Security Council is drafting a new defense doctrine to emphasize the use of preemptive attacks against terrorists and rogue nations. According to this article, the Department of Defense is also now studying how to launch ``no warning'' raids using a ``Joint Stealth Task

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   Mr. President, these ``no warning'' raids will be a devastating application of military force from the air, the ground, and the sea.

   On Sunday, June 16, the Washington Post followed up on its reports about this new national security strategy with an article entitled, ``President Broadens Anti-Hussein Order.'' According to this article:

   President Bush earlier this year signed an intelligence order directing the CIA to undertake a comprehensive, covert program to topple Saddam Hussein, including authority to use lethal force to capture the Iraqi president, according to informed sources.

   The Post article continued:

   One source said that the CIA covert action should be viewed largely as preparatory to a military strike.

   It then discussed the difficulties involved in carrying out an attack on Iraq, including the large number of U.S. forces that would be required, the size of the Iraqi military, and the contentious relationships between Iraqi opposition groups and the United States.

   So what we have is a lot of dots--a dot here, a dot there--about what the foreign policy of the United States is; a dot here, a dot there about what military action our Government might pursue.

   I am constrained to ask, Is this a way to run a constitutional government? Is this a way to lead in a Republic? I hear so many of our Senators talk about this ``democracy.'' This is not a democracy.

   I ask unanimous consent to have printed at the conclusion of my remarks certain excerpts from SA No. 10 and SA No. 14 of the essays by Jay and Madison and Hamilton, the Federalist essays.

   The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

   (See exhibit 1.)

   Mr. BYRD. Senators for themselves can, once again, if they ever have read, read what Madison says about a democracy and what he says about a republic. In those two essays, Senators will find the distinction between a democracy and a republic. I believe this should be required reading on the part of all Senators and all other public officials, essay No. 10 and essay No. 14 by Madison. If Senators want to know the difference between a democracy and a republic, turn to those two essays. Madison is quite clear in the difference.

   Saddam Hussein has now had 11 years since the end of the gulf war to rebuild his war machine. New military action against Iraq would be costly in terms of national treasure and blood. It is exactly because of these kinds of considerations that the Constitution vests in Congress the authority to declare war, and the responsibility to finance military action.

   We have heard Members of the Senate on both sides of the aisle express their support for military operations against Iraq. The case has yet to be argued, at least in any serious detail, or in open debate before the people. Bold talk of chasing down evildoers, stirring patriotic words, expressions of support for our men and women in uniform, these all have an important place in our national life, but the American people deserve to hear why we need to be an aggressor, why we need to risk the lives of their sons and daughters, why we need to take preemptive action against Iraq.

   Now, perhaps we should do so. I am not saying we should not, but I am saying that Congress needs to know about this, and the American people need to have more than just patriotic expressions with visual backup, assemblies and/or words.

   If it is the President's intent to oust Saddam Hussein, he would be well advised to obtain the support of the American

   people, and that would involve seeking congressional authorization to use military force.

   I very well understand there are some military actions that we must take on virtually a moment's notice in the interest of protecting this Nation and its people, and the Commander in Chief has that inherent authority under the Constitution. But there comes a time when the Commander in Chief still needs to level with the American people and Congress.

   We saw what happened in the case of the war in Vietnam when the support of the people back home declined, when the support of the American people began to go away from pursuing the Vietnam war. That support of the American people is necessary, and that support is expressed in many cases by their elected Representatives in both Houses of Congress. Yet this administration persists in an unwise and dangerous effort to keep the public largely in the dark.

   I have to repeat to the administration time and time again, the legislative branch is not a subordinate body. It is not a subordinate department. It is not subordinate to the executive branch. It is an equal branch of the Government. So I think the administration, in embracing secrecy so much and so deliberately, is acting unwisely. It makes no sense. It is dangerous.

   We have all seen the folly of military missions launched and maintained without sufficient support of the people. Time and again history has demonstrated that in a democratic republic such as the United States, the sustained support of the people is essential for the success of any long-term military mission.

   I recall all too well the nightmare of Vietnam. I remember all too well how Congress, without sufficient information and debate, approved military action in that conflict. I recall all too well the antiwar protests, the demonstrations, the campus riots, the tragic deaths at Kent State, as well as the resignation of a President and a Vice President. I remember all too well the gruesome daily body counts in Vietnam.

   The United States was a deeply divided country, and I would say we better read the Constitution more than we read the polls, instead of vice versa--reading the polls first and last and the Constitution somewhere in between.

   I recall all too well the words of Senator Ernest Gruening of Alaska, who was sworn in in the same class which I was sworn, 1958. He was one of the two Senators who voted against the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that gave the President the authority to take military action in Vietnam. Senator Gruening said this:

   By long and established practice, the Executive conducts the Nation's foreign policy. But the Constitution and particularly, by constitutional mandate, the Senate has the right and the duty in these premises to advise and consent. Especially is this true when it is specifically called upon by the Executive ..... for its participation in momentous decisions of foreign policy.

   I recall all too well the words of the other Senator who voted against the Tonkin Gulf resolution. In urging Congress to investigate and hold hearings before endorsing the President's plan, Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon expressed his concern that the Pentagon and the executive branch were perpetrating a ``snow job'' upon Congress and the American people. If the Senate approved the Tonkin Gulf resolution, Senator Morse warned that ``Senators who vote for it will live to regret it.''

   I was one of those who voted for it, and thanks to the good Lord, I am still living. I am the last of that class of 1958. I regret that vote on the Tonkin Gulf resolution. I wish I had had the foresight to vote against it, as did Senators Morse and Gruening.

   I am determined to do everything I can to prevent this country from becoming involved in another Vietnam nightmare. This determination begins with Congress being fully and sufficiently informed on the undertakings of our Government, especially if it involves a commitment to military action.

   We have to depend upon the leadership of the Senate and both sides of the aisle to insist that the Senate be informed. We also have to depend on the leadership of the other body on both sides of the aisle to insist on these things. We represent the American people. They send us here. No President sends me here. No President can send me home. No President sends the distinguished Senator from Nebraska here. No President can send him home. He comes here by virtue of the people of his State. They vote to send him, and he is here to represent them. He is not here to represent a President.

   I realize, as our Founding Fathers realized, that in a government of separated powers, one branch of government has to be able to act swiftly and unilaterally at times. Of course, that is the executive branch. In this age of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, these abilities are needed more than ever. We all know that.

   But I also realize, as did our Founding Fathers, the need for another

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   So, I have heard a lot of talk about the need for this country to speak with one voice on matters of war and peace. Debate on such important issues, say these people, might reveal differences in views on how we ought to act. Our opponents would revel in our discord and the President would lose credibility as he went toe to toe with our enemies. It is as though some think that Congress is an impediment to the interests of this country.

   I am sure the executive branch believes quite strongly from time to time that Congress is an impediment. But we still have the Constitution. Thank God for the Constitution. I hold it in my hand, the Constitution of the United States. And also in this little booklet is the Declaration of Independence. I will refer to that a little later. Here is that Constitution. Thank God for the Constitution. The legislative branch can always turn to this Constitution. That anchor holds. There is an old hymn, ``The Anchor Holds.'' Well, this is the anchor, the Constitution which I hold in my hand. This is the anchor. It holds.

   I don't think debate is a weakness. Debate is our strength. Debate shows that we are a nation of laws, not of men. It shows that no man, no king--we do not have a king in this country. We have some people who are apparently

   monarchists. I think we have some in this Chamber who are sometimes monarchists when it comes to voting. They want to support the executive branch. The executive branch will take care of itself. Remember that, may I say to the young pages.

   There are three branches of Government: The judicial branch--it will always uphold the prerogatives of the judicial branch, the executive branch--it will always uphold the prerogatives of the executive branch, and grab for more; but it is here in the legislative branch that sometimes half, or a large portion, of the membership does not speak for the prerogatives of the legislative branch under this Constitution; they speak for the prerogatives of the executive branch.

   ``We must support the Commander in Chief,'' they say. ``We must support the Commander in Chief.'' But, fellow Senators, this Commander in Chief is only here for 4 years. I have served with 11 Commanders in Chief. We have Commanders in Chief, but we do not have to support the Commander in Chief. I don't care if he is a Democrat. I don't have to support the Commander in Chief. And I sometimes don't, even if he is a Democrat.

   Well, debate shows that we are a nation of laws and that no man--neither king nor Commander in Chief--has the right to send us to war by virtue of his decision alone.

   This Republic--not this democracy; forget it. Read Madison's essays, No. 10 and No. 14--this Republic. There it is, we pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic--not ``the democracy.'' The city-states in the time of Athens could have democracies. My little town of Sophia, with about 1,180 persons, could be a democracy. It is small enough. All the people could come together and they could speak for all the people, but not in this great country of 280 million people. This is a republic. We ought to get in the habit of speaking of it as a republic.

   We are a model to the world in this respect. By debating and voting on issues of war and peace, Congress is able to express the will of the American people and galvanize support for what could be a costly conflict. Debate and well-meaning disagreement on important issues do not weaken the resolve of the American people. It is secret motives--here is where problems begin--secret motives, clandestine plotting, and lack of confidence in the public that are the swift solvent of our national morale.

   If it is the path that this Nation is to take, President Bush ought to present his case to Congress before we must use military force to overthrow Saddam Hussein. That is why the Congress must ask important questions. At least there are some leaders in both Houses, in both parties, who need to be taken into these secrets.

   That is why the Congress must ask important questions, including if we are successful in getting rid of the authoritarian who is now in power in Iraq, who will take his place? Have we covertly hand picked a leader for the future of Iraq? If so, who is he? Once such a military operation is undertaken, how will we know when the mission is accomplished?

   Let there be no doubt, from what I now know and understand, I would support a change in regimes in Iraq. I suppose every Member of this body would probably do that. There is no doubt in my mind about the serious and continuing danger that Iraq poses to the stability of the Persian Gulf region.

   Saddam Hussein has sought to build weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles. His military regularly attempts to shoot down our fighter planes that patrol the No Fly Zones over Iraq. He has worked to heighten the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. He has promoted the starvation of Iraqi children so that he and his cabal can live in palaces. Saddam Hussein is a scourge on the people of Iraq and a menace to peace. We know that. I know these things. I wasn't exactly born yesterday. But it is the duty of Congress to ask questions. Members of Congress need not be intimidated by polls. We are expected to ask questions.

   It is the duty of Congress to ask questions so that we, the people's branch of government, and as a result, the American people, will know what we may be getting ourselves into. It may be that the President already has answers to these questions about Iraq, and that we might awake one morning to see those answers printed in the morning newspaper. As we learned all too well in Korea, Vietnam, and Somalia, it is dangerous to present Congress and the American people with a fait accompli--that is a dangerous thing to do, no matter what the polls say. Those polls can drop suddenly--present Congress and the American people with a fait accompli of important matters on foreign affairs.

   When the Administration is asking the American people to send their sons and daughters into harm's way, knowing that some will never return, it is essential that Congress know more, not less, about the Administration's planned course of action. Congress must not be left to connect dots!

   All that Congress has been promised so far is that the President would consult with Congress about military action against Iraq. This promise falls well short of the mark, particularly because of what the Administration offers in the way of consultation. Like other members of the Senate, I was taken by surprise by the President's sudden announcement of his plan to create a massive new Department of Homeland Security. I favored such, but it was all hatched in the bowels of the White House. And according to the press, there were, I think, four persons who provided the genius behind the creation. In an unbelievable twist of logic, the Administration maintains that it actually consulted with Congress on the proposal. The administration knows better than that. The President's chief of staff was quoted in The Washington Post on June 9, 2002, as saying, ``We consulted with agencies and with Congress, but they might not have known that we were consulting.'' How do you like that? I have been in Congress 50 years now. I have never seen anything like that, where the administration says we have consulted with Congress but they might not have known we were consulting.

   This does not even deserve to qualify for George Orwell's definition of double speak. Such a claim is plain, unmitigated garbage.

   In the aftermath of the carnage and turmoil of the Vietnam war, Congress approved the War Powers Resolution, that provided procedures for Congress and the President to participate in decisions to send U.S. Armed Forces into

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   In face of this Congressional resolution, this administration refuses to consult with anyone outside its own inner circle--well, let its own inner circle provide the money when the time comes--anyone outside its own inner circle about what appears to be its plan for imminent hostilities. This Administration convenes meetings of its trusted few in little underground rooms, while sending decoy envoys to meet with Congress and members of the press, and the public.

   I have not seen such Executive arrogance and secrecy since the Nixon Administration, and we all know what happened to that group.

   I remember too well the Executive arrogance and extreme secrecy that lead to the Iran-Contra scandal. Selling weapons to a terrorist nation in exchange for hostages, and using that money to finance an illegal war in Central America. What a great plan that was! I guess I can understand why the Reagan Administration did not want to tell Congress about that foreign policy adventure.

   I have no doubt that as I speak, there are some within this Administration who are preparing to carry out some sort of attack against Iraq. Well, that's all right. We have to make plans before we do things. I am not sure who they are, but I am connecting the dots, and I am concerned about the picture that is developing.

   If the President needs to take decisive military action to prevent the imminent loss of American lives, he will receive broad support. But if this country is moving methodically and deliberately toward some kind of showdown with Iraq, Congress is entitled to good-faith consultations from the executive branch. We must consider and debate whether we should use military force against Saddam Hussein. And, barring the most exceptional of circumstances, Congress must vote to authorize the President to use military force against Iraq prior to the outbreak of hostilities if, after appropriate debate and consideration, Congress comes to that conclusion.

   As Senator Gruening pointed out, it is the role of the Senate to advise and consent in foreign policy. And those words did not originate with Senator Gruening. Read the Constitution.

   As the War Powers Resolution points out, it is the role of Congress to be active participants in foreign affairs, and certainly such adventures as making war.

   So, as we proceed, let us connect the dots.

   As the Constitution demands, it is the role of Congress to declare war. Yes, we have a Commander in Chief. But what Army and what Navy does he have to command if Congress does not provide the money?

   When the President is ready to present his case to Congress, I am ready to listen. But I think we all must be tired of trying to connect dots in the dark.

   Exhibit 1

   The Federalist No. 10

   JAMES MADISON
* * * * *

   From this view of the subject, it may be concluded, that a pure Democracy, by which I mean, a Society, consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the Government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert results from the form of Government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party, or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is, that such Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives, as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of Government, have erroneously supposed, that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.

   A Republic, by which I mean a Government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking. Let us examine the points in which it varies from pure Democracy, and we shall comprehend both the nature of the cure, and the efficacy which it must derive from the Union.

   The two great points of difference between a Democracy and a Republic are, first, the delegation of the Government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest: secondly, the greater number of citizens, and greater sphere of country, over which the latter may be extended.

   The effect of the first difference is, on the one hand to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice, will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. Under such a regulation, it may well happen that the public voice pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good, than if pronounced by the people themselves convened for the purpose. On the other hand, the effect may be inverted. Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs, may by intrigue, by corruption or by other means, first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests of the people. The question resulting is, whether small or extensive Republics are most favorable to the election of proper guardians of the public weal: and it is clearly decided in favor of the latter by two obvious considerations.

   In the first place it is to be remarked that however small the Republic may be, the Representatives must be raised to a certain number, in order to guard against the cabals of a few; and that however large it may be, they must be limited to a certain number, in order to guard against the confusion of a multitude. Hence the number of Representatives in the two cases, not being in proportion to that of the Constituents, and being proportionally greatest in the small Republic, it follows, that if the proportion of fit characters, be not less, in the large than in the small Republic, the former will present a greater option, and consequently a greater probability of a fit choice.

   In the next place, as each Representative will be chosen by a greater number of citizens in the large than in the small Republic, it will be more difficult for unworthy candidates to practise with success the vicious arts, by which elections are too often carried; and the suffrages of the people being more free, will be more likely to centre on men who possess the most attractive merit, and the most diffusive and established characters.

   It must be confessed, that in this, as in most other cases, there is a mean, on both sides of which inconveniences will be found to lie. By enlarging too much the number of electors, you render the representative too little acquainted with all their local circumstances and lesser interests; as by reducing it too much, you render him unduly attached to these, and too little fit to comprehend and pursue great and national objects. The Federal Constitution forms a happy combination in this respect; the great and aggregate interests being referred to the national, the local and particular, to the state legislatures.

   The other point of difference is, the greater number of citizens and extent of territory which may be brought within the compass of Republican than of Democratic Government; and it is this circumstance principally which renders factious combinations less to be dreaded in the former than in the latter. The smaller the society, the fewer probably will be the distinct parties and interests composing it; the fewer the distinct parties and interests, the more frequently will a majority be found of the same party; and the smaller the number of individuals composing a majority, and the smaller the compass within which they are placed, the more easily will they concert and execute their plans of oppression. Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other. Besides other impediments, it may be remarked, that where there is a consciousness of unjust or dishonorable purposes, communication is always checked by distrust, in proportion to the number whose concurrence is necessary.

   Hence it clearly appears, that the same advantage, which a Republic has over a Democracy, in controlling the effects of faction, is enjoyed by a large over a small Republic--is enjoyed by the Union over the States composing it.
* * * * *

   The Federalist No. 14

   JAMES MADISON
* * * * *

   The error which limits Republican Government to a narrow district, has been unfolded and refuted in preceding papers. [See Essays 9 and 10.] I remark here only, that it seems to owe its rise and prevalence, chiefly to the confounding of a republic with a democracy: And applying to the former reasonings drawn from the nature of the latter. The true distinction between these forms was also adverted to on a former occasions. [See

[Page: S6306]

   To this accidental source of the error may be added the artifice of some celebrated authors, whose writings have had a great share in forming the modern standard of political opinions. Being subjects either of an absolute, or limited monarchy, they have endeavored to heighten the advantages or palliate the evils of those forms; by placing in comparison with them, the vices and defects of the republican, and by citing as specimens of the latter, the turbulent democracies of ancient Greece, and modern Italy. Under the confusion of names, it has been an easy task to transfer to a republic, observations applicable to a democracy only, and among others, the observation that it can never be established but among a small number of people, living within a small compass of territory.

   Such a fallacy may have been the less perceived as most of the governments of antiquity were of the democratic species; and even in modern Europe, to which we owe the great principle of representation, no example is seen of a government wholly popular, and founded at the same time wholly on that principle. If Europe has the merit of discovering this great mechanical power in government, by the simple agency of which, the will of the largest political body may be concentred, and its force directed to any object, which the public good requires; America can claim the merit of making the discovery the basis of unmixed and extensive republics. It is only to be lamented, that any of her citizens should wish to deprive her of the additional merit of displaying its full efficacy on the establishment of the comprehensive system now under her consideration.

   As the natural limit of a democracy is that distance from the central point, which will just permit the most remote citizens to assemble as often as their public functions demand; and will include no greater number than can join in those functions; so the natural limit of a republic is that distance from the center, which will barely allow the representatives of the people to meet as often as may be necessary for the administration of public affairs.

4A) UN Weapons Inspectors in Iraq
Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, I call my colleagues' attention to a recent article by Scott Ritter, former chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq, published in the Los Angeles Times. In this article, Mr. Ritter makes a salient point that deserves careful and serious consideration in this body: how will it be possible to achieve the stated Administration goal of getting weapons inspectors back into Iraq when the Administration has made it known that it intends to assassinate the Iraqi leader?

If nothing else, Saddam Hussein has proven himself a survivor. Does anyone believe that he will allow inspectors back into his country knowing that any one of them might kill him? Is it the intention of the Administration to get inspectors back into Iraq and thus answers to lingering and critical questions regarding Iraq's military capabilities, or is the intent to invade that country regardless of the near total absence of information? Or actually make it impossible for Suddam Hussein to accept the inspectors.

Mr. Ritter, who as former chief UN inspector in Iraq probably knows that country better than any of us here, made some excellent points in a recent meeting with Republican members of Congress. According to Mr. Ritter, no American-installed regime could survive in Iraq. Interestingly, Mr. Ritter noted that though his rule is no doubt despotic, Saddam Hussein has been harsher toward Islamic fundamentalism than any other Arab regime. He added that any U.S. invasion to remove Saddam from power would likely open the door to an anti-American fundamentalist Islamic regime in Iraq. That can hardly be viewed in a positive light here in the United States. Is a policy that replaces a bad regime with a worse regime the wisest course to follow?

Much is made of Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi, as a potential post-invasion leader of Iraq. Mr. Ritter told me that in his many dealings with Chalabi, he found him to be completely unreliable and untrustworthy. He added that neither he nor the approximately 100 Iraqi generals that the US is courting have any credibility inside Iraq, and any attempt to place them in power would be rejected in the strongest manner by the Iraqi people. Hundreds, if not thousands, of American military personnel would be required to occupy Iraq indefinitely if any American-installed regime is to remain in power. Again, it appears we are creating a larger problem than we are attempting to solve.

Similarly, proponents of a US invasion of Iraq often cite the Kurds in the northern part of that country as a Northern Alliance-like ally, who will do much of our fighting on the ground and unseat Saddam. But just last week the Washington Times reported that neither of the two rival Kurdish groups in northern Iraq want anything to do with an invasion of Iraq.

In the meeting last month, Scott Ritter reminded members of Congress that a nation cannot go to war based on assumptions and guesses, that a lack of knowledge is no basis on which to initiate military action. Mr. Ritter warned those present that remaining acquiescent in the face of the Administration's seeming determination to exceed the authority granted to go after those who attacked us, will actually hurt the president and will hurt Congress. He concluded by stating that going in to Iraq without Congressionally-granted authority would be a ``failure of American democracy.'' Those pounding the war drums loudest for an invasion of Iraq should pause for a moment and ponder what Scott Ritter is saying. Thousands of lives are at stake.

President Bush has reportedly authorized the CIA to use all of the means at its disposal--including U.S. military special operations forces and CIA paramilitary teams--to eliminate Iraq's Saddam Hussein. According to reports, the CIA is to view any such plan as ``preparatory'' for a larger military strike.

Congressional leaders from both parties have greeted these reports with enthusiasm. In their rush to be seen as embracing the president's hard-line stance on Iraq, however, almost no one in Congress has questioned why a supposedly covert operation would be made public, thus undermining the very mission it was intended to accomplish.

It is high time that Congress start questioning the hype and rhetoric emanating from the White House regarding Baghdad, because the leaked CIA plan is well timed to undermine the efforts underway in the United Nations to get weapons inspectors back to work in Iraq. In early July, the U.N. secretary-general will meet with Iraq's foreign minister for a third round of talks on the return of the weapons monitors. A major sticking point is Iraqi concern over the use--or abuse--of such inspections by the U.S. for intelligence collection.

I recall during my time as a chief inspector in Iraq the dozens of extremely fit ``missile experts'' and ``logistics specialists'' who frequented my inspection teams and others. Drawn from U.S. units such as Delta Force or from CIA paramilitary teams such as the Special Activities Staff (both of which have an ongoing role in the conflict in Afghanistan), these specialists had a legitimate part to play in the difficult cat-and-mouse effort to disarm Iraq. So did the teams of British radio intercept operators I ran in Iraq from 1996 to 1998--which listened in on the conversations of Hussein's inner circle--and the various other intelligence specialists who were part of the inspection effort.

The presence of such personnel on inspection teams was, and is, viewed by the Iraqi government as an unacceptable risk to its nation's security.

As early as 1992, the Iraqis viewed the teams I led inside Iraq as a threat to the safety of their president. They were concerned that my inspections were nothing more than a front for a larger effort to eliminate their leader.

Those concerns were largely baseless while I was in Iraq. Now that Bush has specifically authorized American covert-operations forces to remove Hussein, however, the Iraqis will never trust an inspection regime that has already shown itself susceptible to infiltration and manipulation by intelligence services hostile to Iraq, regardless of any assurances the U.N. secretary-general might give.

The leaked CIA covert operations plan effectively kills any chance of inspectors returning to Iraq, and it closes the door on the last opportunity for shedding light on the true state of affairs regarding any threat in the form of Iraq weapons of mass destruction.

Absent any return of weapons inspectors, no one seems willing to challenge the Bush administration's assertions of an Iraqi threat. If Bush has a factual case against Iraq concerning weapons of mass destruction, he hasn't made it yet.

Can the Bush administration substantiate any of its claims that Iraq continues to pursue efforts to reacquire its capability to produce chemical and biological weapons, which was dismantled and destroyed by U.N. weapons inspectors from 1991 to 1998? The same question applies to nuclear weapons. What facts show that Iraq continues to pursue nuclear weapons aspirations?

Bush spoke ominously of an Iraqi ballistic missile threat to Europe. What missile threat is the president talking about? These questions are valid, and if the case for war is to be made, they must be answered with more than speculative rhetoric.

Congress has seemed unwilling to challenge the Bush administration's pursuit of war against Iraq. The one roadblock to an all-out U.S. assault would be weapons inspectors reporting on the facts inside Iraq. Yet without any meaningful discussion and debate by Congress concerning the nature of the threat posed by Baghdad, war seems all but inevitable.

The true target of the supposed CIA plan may not be Hussein but rather the weapons inspection program itself. The real casualty is the last chance to avoid bloody conflict.

4B) Center for Domestic Preparedness
The Senator from Arkansas [Mr. HUTCHINSON] proposes an amendment numbered 4069.
Mr. HUTCHINSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:
At the end of subtitle A of title III, add the following:

SEC. 305. CLARA BARTON CENTER FOR DOMESTIC PREPAREDNESS.

Of the amount authorized to be appropriated by section 301(a)(5) for operation and maintenance for defensewide activities, $3,000,000 shall be available for the Clara Barton Center for Domestic Preparedness, Arkansas.

Mr. HUTCHINSON. I thank the Chair.

Mr. President, I appreciate my colleagues giving me an opportunity to speak on this amendment. I think it is very important to our country. It is a matter that, after cloture, is not germane, and I intend to withdraw it. But I give notice that this is an important issue for our country and I intend to talk about it in the future. It is a matter that is critical to the protection of our military. Today we are deploying our troops across the world to fight the war on terrorism, and it is clear our enemies have been actively attempting to acquire biological weapons.

We know Saddam Hussein has been relentless in his pursuit of biological weapons. Yet even with this knowledge, we continue today to deploy our troops without adequate vaccine protection. The shortage of anthrax vaccine, due to the failure of BioPort, has been well publicized. However, as we meet today, our military has no stocks of vaccines against a range of other pathogens that we know could be used against our troops.

According to unclassified documents released by the Pentagon, there are at least 10 nations right now pursuing biological weapons programs. Based on media reports, we know these nations include Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. In 1998, the Department of Defense instituted a program to vaccinate all uniformed military personnel against anthrax, but because of the debacle that has occurred since then, the resulting vaccine shortage, that program was curtailed and is only now beginning to get back in motion.

Today, only 526,000 service members have received any vaccine doses. The vast majority of these have received fewer than the recommended six doses. Soon it is expected that DOD will announce a new anthrax policy whereby only troops being deployed to so-called high-risk areas will be vaccinated. I look forward to learning what areas are designated as high-risk areas. Given what occurred on 9-11, even the Pentagon itself should qualify.

The tragedy of this situation is that there is no reason for us to be in this position. The DOD over a decade ago realized our nation needed a reliable source of vaccine. The private sector is simply unable to meet the requirement for vaccines against biological weapons. The production of these products is not profitable, the need is too small, the infrastructure costs are too high, and the liability is too great.

There is no greater proponent of the private sector than I. However, throughout the past decade private industry has declined to participate in this market. In fact, the only company that is chosen to contract with the Pentagon is BioPort. We know that has not been an altogether satisfactory experience. This problem has been examined many times over the past decade. In fact, it has been studied twice by the Department of Defense. Both times, the conclusion was that our Nation needed a government-owned, contractor-operated vaccine production facility. This is referred to as a GOCO.

In January of 1991, Project Badger presented a report to DOD entitled ``Long Term Expansion of Production Capability for Medical Defense Against Biological Warfare Agents.'' That is a long title, but the conclusion was that we needed to construct a Government-owned facility to provide assured manufacture of products against agents of biological origin. At that time, DOD began site selection. They began planning for such a facility. In 1994, they prepared a study entitled ``Department of Defense Vaccine Production Facility: An Economic Analysis of Alternatives.'' They were moving ahead. Then, the previous administration reversed course and decided to rely solely upon the commercial sector. After dumping over $120 million, we are only now beginning to receive anthrax vaccine. We do not want to repeat that. In November of 2000, the Department of Defense completed another in-depth [Page: S6200] study of a potential GOCO, which included detailed cost and design estimates. In February of 2001, the Department prepared a comprehensive life cycle cost estimate. Finally, last July the Pentagon released its latest study, ``Report on Biological Warfare Defense Vaccine Research & Development Programs.'' This study once again came to the same conclusion, was prepared by a team of DOD personnel, industry leaders, and academics, and it included a letter from former Surgeon General David Satcher, all of it endorsing the concept of a GOCO.

Since September 11, the establishment of a GOCO has been recommended by other organizations outside the Department of Defense. In November of 2001, the Institute of Medicine at the National Academies issued a statement saying: The establishment of a government-owned, contract-operated facility for research, development, and production of vaccines is essential. I repeat, the Institute of Medicine concluded that such a facility is essential. In December of 2001, the Advisory Panel to Assess Domestic Response Capabilities for Terrorism, headed by former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore, issued a report, with their recommendation:

The establishment of a government-owned, contractor-operated national facility for the research, development and production of vaccines and therapeutics for specified infectious, especially contagious diseases, is needed. I offered an amendment to our DOD authorization bill, a critical bill for our troops, that I believe would provide protection for our men and women in uniform. This amendment was cosponsored by Senator Hutchison of Texas, Senator Mikulski of Maryland, Senator Lincoln of Arkansas, Senator Sarbanes of Maryland, and Senator Roberts of Kansas. All of them have cosponsored it. They recognize that it would ensure that our troops receive the protection they require. We have seen DOD study the matter twice; we have seen the Institute of Medicine-issued opinion; former Surgeon General Satcher recommended the building of a GOCO.

All of these independent evaluations have concluded the same, and it is simply this: The private sector, for all of the good that it does, cannot, against some of the boutique biological pathogens and threats that may exist now and in the future against our troops and against our civilian population, and will not in the future see this as a profitable commercial venture. The insurance for the American people, and the insurance for our men and women in uniform, is to have a Government-owned production facility, contractor-operated, to ensure that vaccine will always be available if and when it is needed.

I will withdraw the amendment I have offered. However, I will continue to bring this issue before the Senate. Our troops deserve more, I believe, than they are getting right now, and I intend to continue to pursue this issue as long as it takes until our troops are protected, whether it is through the homeland security bill or the Defense appropriations bill or other vehicles we may have, because this is vitally important.

It is important for our country. It is important for our troops. It is the right thing to do. We have waited too long to act, and should delay no longer.

AMENDMENT NO. 4069 WITHDRAWN
Mr. HUTCHINSON. I ask unanimous consent to withdraw my amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The amendment is withdrawn.
Mr. HUTCHINSON. I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

4C)

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