Christopher S. Bond

Mr. President, New START is a bad deal for the United States. It requires us to reduce our deployed strategic forces while the Russians can add to theirs. This amounts to unilateral reductions.

The treaty gives Russia political leverage, which they will use, to try to prevent us from expanding our missile defenses to protect us against North Korea and Iran. This is unacceptable.

The treaty fails to deal with Russia's reported ten to one advantage in tactical nuclear weapons or their nuclear, sea-launched cruise missiles. However, the Treaty will limit our nonnuclear ballistic missiles.

Compounding these deficiencies, the treaty's verification is weak and the Russians have a poor compliance record.

As vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, I have reviewed all the relevant classified intelligence concerning this treaty. I come away convinced that the United States has no reliable means to verify the treaty's central 1,550 warhead limit.

It is also inexcusable that the United States has forfeited in this treaty the rights it enjoyed under START to full and open access to Russian telemetry. This amounts to giving up the ``keys to the kingdom,'' as it will harm our ability understand new Russian missile developments.

The administration has attempted to justify giving up Russian telemetry on the basis that it is not needed to verify the New START treaty. This is only true if you believe that the treaty's ten or fewer yearly inspections of Russian missiles will provide adequate verification. They do not. In fact, these inspections have three strikes against them.

Strike One: The 10 annual warhead inspections allowed under New START only permit us to sample 2 to 3 percent of the Russian force.

Strike Two: The inspections cannot provide conclusive evidence of whether Russia is complying with the 1,550 warhead limit. If we found a missile loaded with more warheads than Russia declared, it would be a faulty and suspicious declaration. However, we could not infer that Russia had thereby violated the overall 1,550 limit. The Russians could just make some excuse for the faulty declaration, as they have in the past.

Strike Three: New START relies on a type of on-site inspections that Russia illegally obstructed on certain missile types for almost the entire 15 year history of START. Russia's use of illegal, oversized covers were a clear violation of our on-site inspection rights under that treaty. As the old adage goes, ``fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.''

Common sense tells us that the worse a treaty partner's compliance history, the stronger verification should be. However, according to official State Department reports by this administration and the previous one, Russia has violated, or is still violating, important provisions of most key arms control treaties to which they have been a party. In addition to START, this includes the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Biological Weapons Convention, the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, and Open Skies.

We also know that the lower the limits on our weapons, the stronger the verification should be. But with these lower New START limits, our verification of warhead limits is much worse than under the previous START treaty, with its higher limits.

With all these arguments against the treaty, proponents can only point to one tangible benefit--that we will know more about Russian forces with the treaty than without it. This is hardly a ringing endorsement.

Learning more will hardly compensate the United States for the major concessions included in this Treaty. What are these concessions? Unilateral limits, unlimited Russian nuclear systems, limited U.S. nonnuclear systems, unreliable verification, the forfeiture of our telemetry rights, and perhaps most importantly, handing Russia a vote on our missile defense decisions.

In many cases, concerns about particular treaties can be solved during the ratification process. My colleagues have my respect for their attempts to do so. Unfortunately, New START suffers from fundamental flaws that no amount of tinkering around the edges can fix.

For these and other reasons, I cannot in good conscience vote to ratify the New START treaty.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I come to the floor today to talk about the biggest problem no one's ever heard of--America's 100 percent dependence on foreign countries for our rare earth needs--and to introduce legislation that is an essential part of the solution.

If you are at all like me, you may be scratching your head over what exactly are rare-earth metals?

To go back in time a little, more so for some than others, when you were studying the Periodic Table in high school chemistry, rare-earth elements are the metals you were told you would never have to worry about.

Unfortunately, that is the problem--until recently, no one was worrying about rare-earth elements.

But in fact, these metals are critical to U.S. economic and national security.

Back to that high school chemistry class again, rare-earth elements are metallic minerals that significantly enhance the performance of other materials.

These elements are used in small amounts in about every advanced industrial product--we are talking about a wide array of products that Americans depend on every day--from MRI machines to cell phones to computers.

In addition to being an essential component in everyday high-tech products, rare-earth elements are also necessary to our defense industrial base.

Precision guided missiles, secure communications, advanced jet engines, unmanned aerial systems, smart munitions, stealth technology and advanced armor all are rare-earth dependent systems and technologies.

Rare-earth elements also hold unique chemical, magnetic, electrical, luminescence, and radioactive shielding characteristics for environmental and ``green technology'' applications--like hybrid car engines.

Despite the importance of rare-earth elements, the United States is currently 100 percent import-dependent for our rare-earth needs.

Let me spell that out for you--while the United States today is the world's sole economic and military superpower, there is not a single U.S. or North American company actively producing rare-earth elements, metals, alloys or rare-earth magnets.

The United States Geological Survey, USGS, the National Academies, and the National Materials Advisory Board have all determined that rare earths are ``Strategic and Critical'' to U.S. Industry and National Defense.

Yet, the U.S. is 100 percent import dependent upon these materials?

How could we have let this happen?

How could we let a critical component of our economy become beholden to foreign entities?

Concerns about the world's dependence on rare-earth minerals are not just some attempt to read the tea leaves about some futuristic problem.

In fact, the problems for some of our allies have already started.

Over the past several months, Japan has sounded the alarm over their inability to acquire supplies of the rare earths to their companies.

What if our own Nation's ability to import rare-earth elements was restricted or stopped all together?

According to a Government Accountability Office report, GAO, earlier this year, it could take as long as 15 years to rebuild our rare-earth industry.

Common sense tells us that--considering our dependence on rare-earth metals--we don't have another day to waste.

That is what this bill I am cosponsoring today with my good friend, and fellow retiring colleague, Senator Bayh, is all about.

Our legislation will promote the domestic supply and refinement of rare-earth minerals.

It is time to take necessary actions to redevelop a domestic resource of rare-earth elements.

A domestic resource that will ensure we protect our national defense, technology-based industries, and the industrial competiveness of the United States.

Currently, there are no active rare-earth production facilities in the Western Hemisphere.

However, the Pea Ridge mine in Sullivan, MO, is one of two permitted, but shuttered, mines in the United States.

It is here where, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, the greatest concentrations of both light and heavy rare-earth elements exist, particularly those needed for the defense industry.

Rare-earth ore, or oxides, extracted from these mines need to be reduced into a more pure elemental state before being used by industry.

Redeveloping our rare-earth capabilities will be no easy task--in fact, the hurdles for financing such a refinery are significant.

The cost to construct a modern rare-earth refinery capable of supplying a U.S. consumption of 20,000 tons per year is estimated at more than $1 billion.

I do not believe it is practical or desirable for the United States to depend upon any single rare-earth mining company to supply our Nation's rare-earth production or supply chain requirements.

This is why our legislation will require a feasibility study on building a U.S. cooperative refinery to process rare-earth ores from mines in the United States or other allied countries.

Such a cooperative, similar to our successful agricultural co-ops all across rural America, will set the stage for the U.S. Government to establish reserves and protect national security.

To brag on my home State for a minute--Missouri would be ideally suited for the location of a cooperative refinery, given the importance of the Pea Ridge deposit.

Missouri's experienced mining and minerals-processing workforce, its favorable access and costs to the utilities needed to operate a refinery and central location and transportation infrastructure all make Missouri well positioned to help preserve our Nation's strategic and economic security.

In dealing with the tremendous costs of establishing a production and refining facility, the legislation would also provide the Department of Defense $20 million to support the defense supply chain and also $30 million for the development of rare Earth magnets.

The time has come for our country to act and for this Congress-- certainly the next Congress--to take the necessary steps to secure our economic and strategic future. By ensuring that our Nation has its own domestic supply of rare Earths and the ability to process them, we should be able to compete in the 21st century.

The bill Senator Bayh and I have introduced will do just that. While introducing legislation during the last days of the lameduck may seem like a ``Hail Mary,'' this issue is too important to continue to ignore, and we felt it was necessary to launch a ``Hail Mary'' in hopes there will be others of our colleagues who will catch it and run with the ball in the next session of Congress--to mix up the metaphors badly.

In fact, ignoring our growing rare Earth needs and the overseas dominance and China's monopoly is how we got into this mess. Senator Bayh and I have laid the groundwork for this bill, and I hope my colleagues in January will call it back up and see it passed.

The bottom line is this: Just as we cannot afford to be dependent solely on foreign oil cartels for our Nation's energy, counting on any one or a few countries to supply all of America's rare Earth needs crucial to our technological innovation and national security needs is too risky a bet.

I thank my colleagues for listening. I hope they will take up the ball in the next Congress and make sure we begin to deal with this very important problem very seriously.