Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Monday, June 21, 2004 at 10:30 a.m. to hold a hearing on Nominations.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Monday, June 21, 2004 at 3 p.m. to hold a hearing on Nominations.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 385 and S. Res. 386, which were submitted earlier today.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolutions be agreed to, the preambles be agreed to, the motions to reconsider be laid upon the table, all en bloc, and that any statements relating to the resolutions be printed in the Record.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H. R. 4322, which is at the desk.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and any statements relating to the bill be printed in the Record.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the immediate consideration of H. Con. Res. 458, which is at the desk.

I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to the resolution be printed in the Record.

Madam President, on behalf of the leader, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 9:45 a.m. on Tuesday, June 22. I further ask that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and the Senate then resume consideration of Calendar No. 403, S. 2400, the Department of Defense authorization bill, as provided under the previous order; provided further that the previous order be modified so all first-degree amendments be offered by 6:30 with the exception of those amendments cleared by both managers.

I further ask consent that the Senate recess for the weekly party luncheons from 12:30 p.m. until the completion of the official Senate photograph.

Tomorrow the Senate will resume consideration of the Defense authorization bill. Under the previous order, when the Senate resumes consideration of the Defense bill, there will be 1 hour of debate on the Levin missile defense amendment prior to a vote in relation to the amendment. Immediately following that vote, the Senate will proceed to a vote on the Brownback decency amendment. Therefore, Senators should expect back-to-back rollcall votes beginning close to 11 a.m.

For the remainder of the day, the Senate will continue to work through amendments to the bill under an agreement reached earlier this evening. All first-degree amendments must be offered by 6:30 p.m. tomorrow. Therefore, Senators who wish to offer an amendment to the Defense bill should contact the bill managers as soon as possible. In addition to votes on amendments, Senators can expect votes on judicial nominations as well. Finally, a late night session is expected as we move toward completion of the bill.

If there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in adjournment under the previous order.

Mr. President, with regard to the amendment before us, the chairman of the committee and of the subcommittee have made precisely the right point. Congress has passed a law to get us to this point today, to begin the kind of operational testing that everybody agrees we need to do, that even critics of the missile defense program want us to do. Yet now they say let's stop building the missiles that would be used for the operational testing.

The essence of this is captured in one of the first comments of the Senator from California.

She talked about the concept of ``fly before you buy,'' which ordinarily is the way we buy military equipment but not always. She noted that is one of the reasons why the Office of Test and Evaluation was created, and she noted there had been problems as a result of the fact that not all of the operational testing had been done on this program.

Let me quote from the person who heads that office, the Director for Operational Test and Evaluation, Thomas Christie, on this precise issue in his recent testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee:

. . . I think the issue we're talking about here is the

building of missiles that will be put into silos that are

part of the test bed, and we have to have this test bed in

order to do some of the testing that will become more

realistic engagements, geometrics, for example, than we've

been able to do before. And some of these attributes of this

test bed are in response to criticism that came from my

office and my predecessor in previous administrations. . . .

Mr. President, that is the precise point. The criticism has been that not all of the testing has been under the kind of realistic conditions that would be the real battlefield we need to be able to test against. It has been done by contractors, and, of course, that is the way you have to start out to test the components and make sure they work. Eventually, you have to build the missiles, put them into the ground, and test them in real conditions. What better way to do that than to put them in the actual silos in which they will have to be located in Alaska?

By the way, when Thomas Christie speaks of this, he talks about the places for the best chance of intercepting missiles, where we think they might come in. Where is that? Alaska. Weather conditions in Alaska are not necessarily the best. We have to test these missiles under conditions where there would be several feet of snow or ice on top of the missile silo, the lid that has to be blown off for the ground-based missile interceptor to be shot off. That is why we have to have missiles precisely in the place where they can be tested under these operational conditions. That is precisely why we have to, A, authorize and, B, fund this group of 10 missiles which will be part of the test bed.

Now, the fact that they may also have the capability in an extreme emergency of actually shooting down a hostile missile should not be a bad thing. If, God forbid, a hostile country should challenge us and either mistakenly launch a missile at us or intentionally do so against us, wouldn't it be nice to have the missile in the silo to shoot it down with? I fear some opponents--certainly not anybody on the Senate floor--would say you cannot do that because we have not certified yet that it is an operational system.

In the 1991 gulf war, for example, when we had an air defense system called Patriot and Saddam Hussein began sending Scud missiles at our troops in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, we actually sent that air defense system to Saudi Arabia, doing some fixes to it on the way over, and we put it on the ground. As the Scuds were launched, we fired Patriot missiles at them. We didn't hit them all, but I think we hit something like about a third of the Scud missiles.

That system wasn't designed to shoot down missiles. It had never been operationally tested and hadn't been certified for deployment, but in an emergency we needed it. We have done that with other systems, such as JSTARS and some of our unmanned aerial vehicles. There are some other programs we can talk about that we didn't ``fly before we buy'' with those systems. We had them in a developmental process, and all of a sudden we needed them and we used them. Thank God, they were there to be used.

So even if we had to use one of these missiles in an emergency, God forbid, would anybody object to us doing that? Would we have to say, wait a minute, we don't have the certification called for in the Boxer amendment yet? Sorry, we cannot defend ourselves.

I think not. It is an unrealistic requirement. More importantly, it is a requirement that even the head of the group that we have set up, the Director of the Operational Test and Evaluation Office, has said is unnecessary.

We need to move forward in building these missiles so we can put them in the silos and conduct the operational tests that we all agree need to be conducted.

I note that our colleague from California said she has always voted for research. I accept her word on that. But part of the problem for missile defense is that a lot of us vote for research, but when it comes to bending the metal, actually building the system and putting it into the ground, that is when people say we need to slow up, we have not done enough testing, we are not sure it will work against everything. So we have spent an awful lot of money on missile defense and, frankly, a lot of research, but we have not been able to put something into the ground.

President Bush said, when he came into office, we are going to put something into the ground that will work. We may have to let it evolve as it moves forward, and we will make changes as we learn more and more. But that is all right. At least we have an initial capability that might work, God forbid, should somebody accidentally launch something against us, or even do so intentionally. I look at our weapons systems, such as the F-16s that are tested at Luke Air Force Base in Arizona. I am not sure which version of the F-16 we are flying now, but it is not the A, B, C, or D. We build systems and we keep improving them. We evolve in our technology and keep putting that new technology into the systems.

That is precisely what we have decided to do with missile defense, rather than trying to come up with the perfect system that will defeat any kind of offensive system against us. We understand we need to start with something that will be rudimentary and at least will deal with a threat coming from a country like--let's say North Korea, and it may not work against one of the old Soviet systems, for example. But as we get better, we will include those new technologies into these systems, improve them; so as our adversaries develop systems, we will be one step ahead of them.

Finally, part of the purpose of this is deterrence. It is not just to be able to defeat a missile that might be thrown against us. The message we want to send to North Korea, Iran, and other countries is the same one we sent to Soviet Union, which it heard loudly and clearly. It was the message President Reagan sent: We have the economy to outspend you, out-research you, out-build you, and we are going to build a missile defense that will defeat you. Why go to the trouble, since you cannot afford to do it, of trying to build an offensive system that we can defeat? That is the message we want to send to these potential enemies. We can deploy a system and we will always be able to have a system that will defeat what you throw against us. Why take the time and trouble to develop that kind of system? It has a deterrent effect as well.

We need to move forward with this system and defeat the Boxer amendment. Both Chairman Warner and the Senator from Colorado, Senator Allard, are precisely correct in their opposition to this amendment.

Mr. President, I assure my colleague from the State of Delaware, for whom I have a tremendous amount of respect, that his inability to persuade us has nothing to do with his lack of passion or eloquence. He has an abundance of both, and a lot of good faith and friendliness thrown in to boot. The problem is, he is wrong. That is the only problem.

I would like to try to explain why I think that is so, with all good faith, to my friend. He started out by saying that the purpose of his amendment is to unite the Nation and then proceeded to offer an amendment which chose a very small minority of taxpayers on whom to raise taxes, and that is supposed to unite the Nation.

With all due respect to my friend, I do not think that unites the Nation. That hearkens back to the old class warfare concept that there are some people who are so rich that we have to soak them a little bit more in order to be fair.

In fact, that is implicit in the argument. We have a lot of people overseas sacrificing. These rich people must not be sacrificing enough so let us extract more money from them in the form of income taxes. That is the implicit argument. That is not a uniting argument.

The interesting thing is that when it comes to the Tax Code of the United States, Americans are very egalitarian. Middle-income taxpayers support repeal of the death tax, for example, even though they know it would never help them. They support the retention of the tax cuts on the highest tax brackets, on the middle tax brackets. We all support it for the lower tax brackets. In fact, a lot of people would like to be in the next higher bracket. That may be one reason they do not want to soak the rich, because they would like to be in that next bracket maybe in a few years.

The reality is, most people are perfectly happy, even where they are, supporting fair taxes. Polls have been taken, and the question asked is, What do you think is the fair percentage of taxes to extract from Americans? The answer, uniformly, year after year, is about one-third, and that applies to all tax brackets. So most Americans believe that the fair tax would be about a third of what one makes, regardless of how rich they are.

What are the real facts about the sacrifice that Americans make financially, the sacrifice, that is to say in the amount of taxes that they pay to fund things such as the war effort? Let me give the exact statistics, because I think this makes the point that there is already a lot of sacrifice--and, by the way, it is a willing sacrifice.

When it comes to war, I think we are all willing to do more because we are asking some young men and women to sacrifice an awful lot, but let's get the exact facts.

How much do the top 1 percent--and that is the people we are talking about--pay in taxes in this country? The top 1 percent obviously pay more than 1 percent, maybe 5 percent or 10 percent, maybe 20 percent, 30 percent? Do my colleagues know how much the top 1 percent pay? They pay almost a third of the taxes of this country. So the folks we are talking about, the 1 percent pay, to be exact, 32.3 percent of the taxes. Almost exactly a third of the taxes are paid by the top 1 percent.

That is more than fair. That is a pretty progressive tax system.

How about the top 5 percent? They pay over half of all taxes. Just the top 5 percent pay 52.8 percent of the taxes.

How about the top 10 percent? We always like to talk about the top 10 percent of the class, and that is a pretty elite group. The top 10 percent pay almost two-thirds of all of the taxes--64.8 percent, to be exact. What do the bottom half percent of our taxpayers pay? There is the top half and the bottom half. How much do my colleagues think the bottom half pay? Less than 4 percent of the taxes are paid by the bottom half--36 percent, to be exact.

One could say the wealthier people in this country are paying their fair share. One could say they are making a sacrifice. I would not put it that way because, frankly, I think most of them can afford to do it. I do not think it is something they resent doing. So I think it is a sacrifice they are very willing to take on, but I do not think we should contend that we are uniting America by picking a very small minority of taxpayers, who are already paying a third of all of the taxes in the country, and saying now they are going to have to pay some more or else they are not sacrificing enough.

The interesting thing is that the tax cuts President Bush proposed and we passed into law actually increased the percentage of taxes paid by those in the higher brackets. It did not decrease it. So it added to the sacrifice, if one wants to put it that way.

In every one of these brackets, if we want to take the top 1 percent, the top 5 percent, the top 10 percent, the percentage of taxes paid by that group of people is higher today than it was before the tax cuts. And the percentage paid by the lower 50 percent is actually less. It used to be 4.1 percent. Now it is down to 3.6 percent.

So it is a specious argument to suggest that somehow these people are not paying their fair share, that the only way to be fair is to make them sacrifice some more. I don't think we should look at the war effort this way, let alone fund our Government this way. I don't think it is the way to unite the country. If anything, it further tends to divide the country.

I would like to move to the second point. I think most people now recognize that the tax reductions had a great deal to do with the stimulation of the economy. Why was that so? Primarily because there was more capital available. People were able to keep more of their own money, and they did one of three things with it: They either spent it, which helped some businesses because they now had more revenue; or they invested it, then there was more capital to be invested in businesses to create more jobs, for example; or they saved it, and savings amounts to investment because whatever institution you put it in then invests the money.

So in all three situations there was more money infused into the economy; more capital, which created more jobs; and those jobs, the jobs that have been created and the capital infused in the economy, have created an extraordinarily strong economy.

One of the results of that has been to begin to reduce the budget deficit by providing more income to the Federal Government because more money is being paid by people and by businesses. That wealth is what is going to be able to help us win the war as well as fund the other things we have to fund.

The argument of my colleague from Delaware is: But this is a very small amount of money. One-tenth of 1 percent, I believe, is the number. That may be. One-tenth of 1 percent of what we are talking about is a heck of a lot of money--$25 billion to be exact, as I understand it. So we are not talking peanuts. That is $25 billion that would not be helping to create new jobs, to stimulate the economy, to create additional wealth, which could be used to pay for the war as well as the other things on which we need to spend it.

It is an especially important part of the economy. Phil Gramm, our former colleague from Texas, used to talk about one of his constituents who said he had a lot of jobs in his life. He worked for a lot of employers, and he said, the funny thing was they all had more money than he did.

There are employers and there are employees. Thank God for both. But you have to have enough capital, enough wealth, to create jobs to pay people to do work for you in order for the rest of us to have a job. It is those people in these tax brackets who have that capital that they are able to invest in a business, so-called disposable income, money that they can invest in a stock or some other equity to help create a job in this country. That money has more effect in the economic recovery than a lot of the other money that is paid in taxes. Therefore, this is not an insignificant proposition that we are talking about, only talking about one-tenth of 1 percent, and therefore what difference and does it matter? It could make a great deal of difference in the economic health of our country.

It is wrong to raise taxes at this point when we know the reduction in taxes, especially the marginal rates, have produced such a strong effect on the economy.

We could get into an argument about small businesses. There is an entire report that I could get into that talks about the effect on small businesses. We know many of the people in this tax bracket are small business owners. These are where most of the jobs are created, 7 out of 10 jobs, if you want to get into the statistics, are created by small businesses. There are 8 million small businesses in America that employ over half the workers, and this tax rate is the rate many pay because they are a passthrough entity, like the subchapter S corporations and partnerships and so on. We don't need to get into all that.

The point is, this hurts small businesses just as much as it hurts big businesses. In any event, it hurts those who create jobs, and it doesn't unite America. It doesn't unite us as a nation, as my colleague would suggest. It tends to divide us and hurt us. That is one of the reasons we oppose it.

There are very few people on the other side of the aisle for whom I have greater respect than the Senator from Delaware. I understand the motivation behind his proposal. I simply think it is the wrong approach. It is in that spirit that I oppose his amendment and urge my colleagues to keep the tax cuts that we put in place. They have done a lot of good. Let's keep them. We do not need to hurt somebody in order to unite the country. We have enough revenue to pay for the increased needs of our country. Of course, the amendment doesn't even apply that money to the war in Iraq. There is an assumption that it would be used for that purpose, and I will grant that assumption. But the bottom line is we don't have to do this in order to win the war in Iraq, in order to supply our troops, and it would have very negative effects on the economy of the country, as well as being very unfair.

So I urge my colleagues to vote against the amendment of the Senator from Delaware.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, June 17, 2004, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing on ``An Overview of the Regulation of the Bond Markets.''

Concurrent with the hearing, the Committee intends to vote on the nomination of the Honorable Alan Greenspan to be Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System; on S. 894, ``The Marine Corps 230th Anniversary Commemorative Coin Act''; and S. 976, ``The Jamestown 400th Anniversary Commemorative Coin Act of 2003.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to meet on June 17, 2004, at 9:30 a.m. on Enhancing Border Security.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, June 17, at 10 a.m. to receive testimony regarding the Environmental Management Program of the Department of Energy and Issues associated with accelerated cleanup.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, June 17, 2004, at 9:30 a.m. to hold a hearing on Law Enforcement Treaties.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, June 17, 2004, at 2 p.m. to hold a hearing on Nominations.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, June 17, 2004, at 3 p.m. to hold a hearing on Nominations.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet to conduct a markup on Thursday, June 17, 2004, at 9:30 a.m. in Dirksen Senate Building Room 226.

Agenda

I. Nominations: Henry W. Saad, to be U.S. Circuit Judge for the Sixth Circuit; and Claude A. Allen to be U.S. Circuit Judge for the Fourth Circuit.

II. Legislation: S. 1735, Gang Prevention and Effective Deterrence Act of 2003 Hatch, Feinstein, Grassley, Graham, Chambliss, Cornyn, Schumer, Biden; S. 1635, L-1 Visa Intracompany Transferee, Reform Act of 2003 Chambliss; S. 2013, Satellite Home Viewer Extension Act of 2004 Hatch, Leahy, DeWine, Kohl; S.J. Res. 4, Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States authorizing Congress to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States Act of 2003 Hatch, Feinstein, Craig, Sessions, DeWine, Grassley Graham, Cornyn, Specter, Chambliss; S. 1700, Advancing Justice through DNA Technology Act of 2003 Hatch, Biden, Specter, Leahy, DeWine, Feinstein, Kennedy, Schumer, Durbin and Kohl; S. Res. 322, A resolution designating August 16, 2004, as ``National Airborne Day'' of 2004 Hagel, Durbin, Graham, Hatch; S. Res. 370, A resolution designating September 7, 2004, as ``National Attention Deficit Disorder Awareness Day'' of 2004 Cantwell; and S. 2396, Federal Courts Improvement Act of 2004 Hatch, Leahy, Chambliss, Durbin, Schumer, Clinton

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet on Thursday, June 17, 2004, at 9 a.m., for a hearing entitled ``Buyer Beware: The Danger of Purchasing Pharmaceuticals Over the Internet.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on June 17, 2004, at 2:30 p.m. to hold a closed hearing on Intelligence Matters.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Science, Technology and Space be authorized to meet on Thursday, June 17, 2004, at 2:30 p.m. on the Final Report on the President's Commission on Implementation of U.S. Space Exploration Policy.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Water and Power of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, June 17, at 2:30 p.m.

The purpose of the hearing is to receive testimony on S. 2513, a bill to authorize the Secretary of the Interior to provide financial assistance to the Eastern New Mexico Rural Water Authority for the planning, design, and construction of the Eastern New Mexico rural water system, and for other purposes; S. 2511, a bill to direct the Secretary of the Interior to conduct a feasibility study of a Chimayo water supply system, to provide for the planning, design, and construction of a water supply, reclamation, and filtration facility for Espanola, NM, and for other purposes; S. 2508, a bill to redesignate the Ridges Basin Reservoir, CO, as Lake Nighthorse; S. 2460, a bill to provide assistance to the State of New Mexico for the development of comprehensive state water plans, and for other purposes; and S. 1211, a bill to further the purposes of Title XVI of the Reclamation Projects Authorization and Adjustment Act of 1992, the ``Reclamation Wastewater and Groundwater Study and Facilities Act'', by directing the Secretary of the Interior to undertake a demonstration program for water reclamation in the Tularosa Basin of New Mexico, and for other purposes.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the column ``Empty Words'' by Frank Gaffney, which appears in today's Washington Times, be printed in the Record. I believe that this piece appropriately emphasizes the crucial role continued research plays in maintaining the credible nuclear deterrrent of the United States. As more information becomes available regarding covert nuclear programs in North Korea and Iran, the sustainability and credibility of America's nuclear arsenal is of paramount concern.

Mr. President, I, too, would like to comment on one of the legacies of our late President Ronald Reagan, the legacy of ensuring that the free world would prevail over the Soviet Union in the cold war.

I thought it was interesting that in one of the comments about Reagan very recently made on National Public Radio, June 8 of this year, Mr. Gennady Gerasimov, spokesman for Mikhail Gorbachev, said this:

I see President Reagan as a grave digger of the Soviet

Union and the spade that he used to prepare this grave was

SDI, a Strategic Defense Initiative, so-called ``Star Wars.''

The trick was that the Soviet leadership believed that this

SDI defense is possible and then--because it's possible, we

must catch up with the Americans. And this was an invitation

to the arms race, and the Soviet economy could not really

afford it and this way Reagan really contributed to the

demise of the Soviet Union.

Who better to know that than the spokesmen for Mikhail Gorbachev who have said similar things? Twenty-one years ago, President Reagan posed a very important question to the American people. He asked us to consider whether the free people of the world should continue to have to rely upon the threat of a massive retaliation of nuclear weapons to prevent an attack by the opposition. He asked: What would it take to free the world from this threat? He answered as follows:

I know this is a formidable, technical task, one that may

not be accomplished before the end of this century. Yet,

current technology has attained a level of sophistication

where it's reasonable for us to begin this effort. It will

take years, probably decades of effort on many fronts. There

will be failures and setbacks, just as there will be

successes and breakthroughs. . . . But isn't it worth every

investment necessary to free the world from the threat of

nuclear war? We know it is.

We began making that investment. It was one of the reasons we had a deficit during the Reagan years. It was part of the so-called defense buildup, to invest billions of dollars in the research--yes, there were failures, but there were many successes--to develop a Strategic Defense Initiative, an ability to defend ourselves against a ballistic missile attack from an enemy. A lot of Americans probably think we developed that strategic defense, that we have that capability today. They might remember that during the first Persian Gulf war Patriot missiles shot down some of the Scuds that were fired by Saddam Hussein.

But the grim reality is strategic defense is still not a reality. We still don't have the ability to defend against a missile attack. What happened during the Persian Gulf war? We used an air defense system to shoot down airplanes, and in the field, literally, as we shipped it from the United States to Israel and to Saudi Arabia and to Kuwait, made modifications in it so that we hoped it might work to shoot down some of the missiles that Saddam Hussein shot toward Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. In fact, some of those missiles--roughly a third of them--were intercepted by the Patriot. It was a crude weapon that was modified in the field. It had never been tested against other missiles. Yet we used what we had at the time because of the threat that existed.

Throughout the Clinton years and the first Bush administration, research continued. Every time we got close to, as they say, bending metal, actually building a missile, somebody would object and say we are not quite there yet. We haven't proven it can work. It is going to cost a lot of money, or the Russians--then the Soviets--might be unhappy with it.

After the demise of the Soviet Union, we agreed to scrap the ABM Treaty, and both President Putin and President Bush agreed that there was no need for a treaty that would define how many missiles each country could have and how many nuclear warheads because, frankly, we didn't have the need for them anymore and they were costly to maintain. We would destroy as many of ours as we wanted to destroy, and they could destroy all of theirs that they wanted to destroy. It was too expensive to keep around. There are still some. There are still some in Russia, I might add, where some believe it still might be worth trying to develop this offensive capability because the U.S. has never deployed a ballistic missile defense. There are those in China who believe the same thing, and also in North Korea, who I suspect believe we are bluffing.

Let me quote something from a high-ranking official in Iran, from Iran's clerical hierarchy, delivered at Tehran's Al-Hussein University very recently, and reported in the May 28 edition of a newspaper in London:

We have a strategy drawn up for the destruction of Anglo-

Saxon civilization and for the uprooting of the Americans and

the English. The global infidel front is a front against

Allah and the Muslims, and we must make use of everything we

have at hand to strike at this front, by means of our suicide

operations or by means of our missiles. There are 29

sensitive sites in the U.S. and in the West. We have already

spied on these sites and we know how we are going to attack

them.

There is more that we could bring to the information from the intelligence community, that is open material that we are all aware involve plans by leaders in North Korea, Iran, and other places to try to develop missile technology and nuclear technology to attack places such as the United States. The North Koreans already have the capacity to attack Hawaii and Alaska, and we don't yet have a missile defense system in place to stop it.

Thanks to President Bush and the efforts of the Congress and the missile act that we passed, we have put into place a program to actually develop and deploy a missile defense system. It

is not the be-all and end-all. It would not destroy everything the Soviet Union used to be able to use against us, but it would stop the kinds of missiles that North Korea, Iran, and perhaps others might want to send our way.

Yet today we are at a crossroads. We begin debating today the Defense Authorization Act and expect amendments to be offered once again to cut the heart out of the missile defense program, prevent it from being deployed to actually be able to shoot down the missiles of an attacking country. It is interesting what is at work here. I say cut the heart out. They want to cut out over half a billion dollars--$515.5 million-- from the missile defense program. Why? They claim it hasn't yet been operationally tested. What does operational testing mean? It means you take it out of the laboratory kind of testing and put it into the ground; put the missile into the silo, and you run against it a real test with an offensive missile like the one you want to be able to defend against and see if you can knock it down. That is real operational testing, battlefield conditions.

Sometimes you cannot afford to do that kind of testing, and you have to go with what you have just as we did in the first Persian Gulf war. There are other examples. The JSTAR is a program that had never been operationally tested, but we found that we needed it and, as a result-- it is the Joint Surveillance and Target Attack Radar System, which is an aircraft that played an important role in the 1991 Persian Gulf war by providing warning to forces on the ground when the Iraqi military was on the move. This had never been tested. JSTAR was in preproduction; it was a preproduction aircraft. They literally had to outfit it on the way to the theater. We used it and it worked.

The Predator is another example, and the Global Hawk. Unmanned aerial vehicles have been valuable assets on the war on terrorism. They were not operationally tested. They were hardly ready for use, but we needed something that could do what they did. That is the way it is with missile defense today. We need to have the ability to shoot down a missile aimed at us by, for example, Iran or North Korea or some other enemy that might think we are bluffing.

What about this claim that it hasn't been operationally tested? Mr. President, this is how we operationally test it. We put it into the silo, erect the radars, send a target missile against it, and see if it will work. We have had many tests--something like 18 tests, and all of the most recent tests have been successful. We are quite confident it will work. It needs to be tested in battlefield conditions, and this is the way to get it done. But the cuts that are being proposed would prevent us from buying the number of missiles we need in order to conduct this testing and still have enough left in the ground to prevent an attack should there be one launched against us.

There is a basic catch-22 being imposed against us. That catch-22 is that you cannot deploy it until you can operationally test it, and you cannot test it until you deploy it.

It would be folly for us to support an amendment that would prevent us from fielding these missiles. Eventually, we are only talking about 20 interceptors based at Fort Greeley in Alaska and Vandenberg Air Force Base. The money that has been set aside for the first tranche of these missiles is already now producing the missiles to put in the first set of silos. We are now talking about the downpayment on the additional interceptors, No. 21 through No. 30. We have already cut the long lead procurement funding for interceptors No. 31 through 40. So we have already delayed that, which will make it much more costly.

The bottom line is, as we have been told by General Kadish--the general who runs this program--it will be much more time-consuming and expensive if we cut the money out of the budget this year to prevent the production of these missiles that are going to be needed both for operational testing, as well as to be prepared to defend against an enemy attack should it come.

The point I want to make today is this: The Soviet Union was brought to its knees because it believed President Reagan when he said we are going to develop a means of countering your most effective weapon, so you might as well not even try to spend the money and the effort and the time to create this program because we will be able to defeat you; we are not kidding.

It has been over 20 years since President Reagan made that announcement, and we still do not have the missiles in the ground. I am afraid some of our potential enemies are going to conclude that we were bluffing all along, that we do not have the will to spend the money and to put the program in place to provide this kind of defense.

The point of this defense is not just to be able to operationally test it and have it in the ground to stop a missile should one be launched against us, but to deter nations that might believe we are bluffing, to deter nations from spending the money to build these offensive weapons in the first place, to deter these leaders, these people in places such as North Korea and Iran, from concluding that if they will simply spend the money it will take to build the nuclear weaponry and the missiles to fire them, that we will somehow forget about developing missile defenses or conclude that it is too expensive, and the richest Nation on Earth, the Nation that has the financial capability of providing this kind of defense, will decide not to do it.

The point of our exercise today is to move forward with the bill that the committee has put before us. It is a good bill. The bill has an authorization for enough money to buy the next group of missiles we need to put in the silos for testing purposes, for the purpose of shooting down a missile should one be launched against us--we do not have that ability today--and third, to deter countries that might be thinking they can go ahead with the development of this kind of a system because the United States will never get around to deploying an effective missile defense system.

Now is the time for us to act. It is not the time for us to blink in the face of these dictatorial countries. Should we support the amendment that would cut the heart out of missile defense funding for this year, it would send a signal to these countries that the United States has been bluffing all along. We were not bluffing when Ronald Reagan made that important announcement. The Soviet Union understood that. Can we do any less today than to make it crystal clear to our would-be enemies that we are not bluffing, that we mean what we say, that we intend to protect America, that we intend to protect others who are our allies, and that we will not permit an offensive ballistic missile to strike our land and kill our people? To do anything else would be morally irresponsible.

As President Reagan said, if we have the capability of defending ourselves and preventing this kind of conflagration, should we not take advantage of that wonderful capability? I am optimistic about our ability, and I am confident about the American people, and I am sure they want us to confirm to the world that we mean what we say, just as Ronald Reagan meant what he said.

Mr. President, Robert Robb is one of the great columnists in American journalism today, and his tribute to Ronald Reagan is among his best work. I ask unanimous consent to have the following article printed in the Record.

I am happy to yield.

Mr. President, America mourns the loss of an epic-making leader, Ronald Wilson Reagan.

As the biographer Lou Cannon has said, Reagan ``possessed a special `something' that transcended the appeal of ordinary politicians,'' and he knew it. Even so--and this is an important point--he was neither a vain man nor in love with power. In not misusing that special appeal that he had, he showed such character and goodness. He could have been, but was not, a demagog. He was trying to accomplish his exalted vision of this country, only that. And in large measure, he succeeded.

Militarily, he rebuilt America's capacity to defend itself and its allies. Reagan's defense buildup led to U.S. victories in the cold war, the Persian Gulf war, and beyond. In fact, dealing

skillfully with a Congress controlled during most of his Presidency by the other party, he secured funding for weapons systems that are still being used.

Diplomatically, he achieved with the Soviet Union, our adversary for most of the last century, an accord that eliminated whole classes of nuclear weapons from the stockpiles of both countries.

Politically, he enabled us to regain confidence in America. His confidence in his country and his goodness was utterly unshakeable, so he was just the right leader to rise to the fore when the national spirit had been battered by our withdrawal from Vietnam, the scandal of Watergate, and the malaise that his predecessor identified but could not seem to counteract.

Economically, he slew the dragon of double-digit inflation. He braved unpopularity to stay the course with Paul Volcker, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, in tightening the money supply. This steadfastness saw the United States through its worst economic crisis in 50 years. The economy slid deep into a recession before recovering in late 1982.

Along with tightening the money supply to kill inflation, Reagan was convinced that marginal tax rates must be cut to stimulate growth. These anti-inflation and tax policies defied the conventional wisdom of that time. But they worked. They gave us what the late, great journalist Robert Bartley called ``the seven fat years,'' a time of unprecedented job creation and economic expansion in America.

Even as Ronald Reagan won through in domestic policy, he was a statesman who left his mark on the world.

During his two terms in office, early 1981 to the end of 1988, he championed the cause of human rights in the Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe, standing up for freedom, democracy, and civil society. He spoke passionately of God-given rights and said self- government and free markets were the only way to vindicate those rights. He wanted the people who were living under oppression to regain their dignity, and his words gave hope to millions.

In his 1982 Evil Empire speech before the British House of Commons, President Reagan said:

While we must be cautious about forcing the pace of change,

we must not hesitate to declare our ultimate objectives and

to take concrete actions to move toward them. We must be

staunch in our conviction that freedom is not the sole

prerogative of a lucky few but the inalienable and universal

right of all human beings.

The Reagan administration fostered democracy around the world in the 1980s, in Central America, South America, Asia. The Philippines, Taiwan, and South Korea all liberalized their societies in ways that may not have been possible without the Reagan administration's support.

President Reagan will go down in history for his doctrine of peace through strength. It turned this country around militarily and diplomatically and turned the course of the cold war dramatically in our favor. It was also a negotiating strategy--just the right one, it turned out--for dealing with a Communist power that was ailing economically but still aggressive. The Soviet Union had last invaded a country the year before he was elected, Afghanistan in 1979. The U.S.S.R. was engaged in the 1970s in a rapid military buildup. The prevailing nuclear standoff between the two superpowers when Reagan came into office was frightening. They were locked in a decades-old equilibrium under which neither attacked the other because each could, at the push of a button, destroy the other's populations with nuclear weapons. President Reagan once commented that this nuclear standoff, which was called mutual assured destruction, was ``a sad commentary on the human condition.''

He had the courage and the imagination to think of a way out of it: erecting a defense against nuclear arms. This would end the practice of holding civilian populations hostage to the atomic bomb. It was, he believed, both militarily and morally necessary to strike off in this new direction. As he pointed the way, he endured heavy criticism and even ridicule, but it didn't faze him.

His idea was brilliant, for even if embarking on this high-tech shield against missiles did not lead to a deployable U.S. system right away, he knew the Soviets would pour their resources into matching our progress toward missile defense. It was a competition they could ill afford. The extra burden economically and even psychologically of keeping up with missile defense and the entire Reagan military buildup hastened the collapse of the Soviet economy and the Communist system itself.

People who didn't agree with President Reagan called him a saber rattler and worse. Opponents wrung their hands at this peace-through- strength approach, insisting a buildup of U.S. military capabilities couldn't possibly help us if the goal was a safer and more peaceful world. Yet the critics were wrong. President Reagan, the saber rattler, sat down with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Washington in December of 1987 and the two men signed the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty which abolished the use of all intermediate and shorter range missiles by the United States and the Soviet Union.

The following year the Reagan administration created the On-Site Inspection Agency to conduct U.S. inspections of Soviet military facilities and to aid Soviet inspections at our facilities. The Reagan- Gorbachev diplomacy set the stage for the 1990 signing between NATO and the Warsaw Pact of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty.

One of the well-known personal traits of Ronald Reagan was he didn't care who got credit for successful policies. Goodness knows, his detractors, then and even now, will deny him any credit he might deserve for making the world safer. He did make the world safer, though. That is the truth of it. And history will remember him that way.

We can say of Ronald Reagan what Lincoln said in praise of his, Lincoln's, personal role model Henry Clay:

He loved his country partly because it was his own country,

but mostly because it was a free country.

The role model of our time is Ronald Reagan. His principles are the principles we now embrace. They will help us to keep this free country and to help others who want to be free.

As we continue in the wake of September 11 to fight the war on terror, we all take comfort and inspiration from the jaunty optimism and the seriousness of purpose of Ronald Reagan. President George W. Bush practices Reagan's doctrine of peace through strength. He has done so by confronting and defeating tyranny in Afghanistan and Iraq, by pursuing deployment of missile defenses, by leading the international community to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and by demonstrating to the world that the United States is willing to rally free peoples in defense of our civilization and our democratic way of life.

Thank you, Ronald Reagan, for showing the way.

Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the amendment and would like to first reflect on some remarks that would have been presented by the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Senator Warner, were he able to be here. Then I will make a couple of comments on my own as well.

He points out that for the past 2 years, the Department of Energy has requested funding or legislation for several nuclear-weapons-related activities, including a feasibility study on the robust nuclear earth penetrator and the advanced concepts initiative.

These requests generated significant debate in the Congress, both last year and in the previous year. Last year, Congress decided to authorize research and the feasibility studies on advanced concepts and the robust nuclear earth penetrator, while ensuring that the Congress has the final say on whether more advanced development activities may proceed in the future.

So it is strictly up to Congress as to whether we would authorize anything in the future, and that has nothing to do with the bill that is before us today.

Specifically, the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2004 prohibits the Department of Energy from proceeding to the engineering/development, production or deployment phases of the robust nuclear earth penetrator, or a low-yield nuclear weapon, unless specifically authorized by Congress.

This is a prudent way to handle a very sensitive issue, which is deserving of the Congress's most careful oversight. I believe we struck a proper balance which will allow our weapons scientists, engineers, and technicians to conduct necessary research and studies to ensure that they maintain the ability to respond to any future military requirements from the Department of Defense.

We know rogue nations are increasingly developing hardened and deeply buried targets where they can conduct command, control, and communications operations, operate laboratories to produce and store weapons of mass destruction, and engage in other activities.

Pursuant to military requirements from the Department of Defense to address hardened and deeply buried targets, the National Nuclear Security Administration is doing a feasibility study to determine whether an existing nuclear weapon can be modified so that it can destroy these hardened targets--I repeat, an existing nuclear weapon, not a new nuclear weapon. The feasibility study is also trying to determine what collateral damage would result in such an event.

The need for validating this capability is well documented over several preceding administrations. Increased urgency to develop a capability to destroy hardened and deeply buried targets, both conventional and nuclear, was identified in the Quadrennial Defense Review, also in the Nuclear Posture Review, and the Hard and Deeply Buried Target Capstone Report and the HDBT report to the Congress. Advanced penetrators armed with conventional warheads have a very limited capability. They can only address relatively shallow targets whose location is known precisely.

I would parenthetically note that we also have photographs at the very beginning of the gulf war where we thought we had identified the location of Saddam Hussein. Very precise weaponry was deployed to try to penetrate the bunkers and facilities in which we thought the command and control was located. You remember the photographs of the concrete, layer upon layer upon layer, and hardened steel intermeshed with that concrete, none of which, of course, was penetrated enough to destroy the target we wanted to destroy. Only nuclear weapons can address the deeply buried targets that are protected by manmade or even hard geology. Our current nuclear penetrator, the B6-111, is only capable of penetrating a few feet of frozen soil and is incapable of attacking successfully a growing number of these hardened targets.

The feasibility study on the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator is focused on technical issues related to adapting an existing nuclear weapon to meet a spectrum of nuclear requirements for hardened and deeply buried targets, including survival through impact and penetration of hard geology. While the feasibility study on the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator will allow the Department of Energy to determine if the capability of destroying the HDBTs is possible, the current authorization will not result in a new or modified nuclear weapon.

Again I want to emphasize that the National Defense Authorization Act for the fiscal year 2004 included a provision requiring a specific authorization from the Congress before the Secretary of Energy can proceed to the engineering/development phase or subsequent phase of a Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator or a low-yield nuclear weapon.

I support the National Nuclear Security Administration's ability to continue the feasibility study and the Advanced Concepts Initiative, and I urge my colleagues to oppose the amendment, which is, if anything, premature because of the points I have just made.

I will note in closing that it is possible to show photographs of a flattened Tokyo during World War II that was not bombed with a nuclear weapon or a burned-out Dresden, Germany. It is possible to show a lot of destruction in war caused by either nuclear or conventional weapons. But that is not what we are talking about nor are we talking about opening the nuclear door, as was mentioned. No new nuclear weapon is envisioned here. What we are talking about, again, is a feasibility study to use something we already have to destroy a target.

I would answer the question, Why would we want to do this? There are a lot of intelligence reports we cannot get into on the Senate floor that discuss the propensity for potential enemies of the United States to deeply bury what they don't want us to be able to destroy--whether it be weapons of mass destruction, production or storage or launch capability facilities or command and control or other kinds of targets we may need to deal with in a time of war. Why would we want to deny ourselves the ability to destroy those kinds of targets?

The point was mentioned that Secretary Rumsfeld testified. What did he testify to? That this was worth studying. He never said we were proceeding, because the law would prohibit that. That is all he said, that this is worth studying. Indeed it is.

Why does the 5-year budget requirement carry out a larger sum of money? Simply because that is what we require. We say to the DOE: Even though you have a 1-year number here, what would it look like if you proceeded 5 years out? And they have to tell us. But that is a hypothetical number because we have not authorized anything beyond the number we are talking about here.

The final point. Once we start talking about nuclear weaponry, a lot of very extraneous arguments get brought into the picture. I suggest we not go down that road because it is not necessary. It has nothing to do with this debate.

One of the arguments is, why would we want to begin testing nuclear weapons when we are trying to convince these other countries such as Pakistan and India, and so on, not to do so? I remind my colleagues that long after the United States imposed a moratorium on all nuclear testing, it was not just India or Pakistan but the North Koreans who were trying to develop a weapon. The French and the Chinese tested weapons after our moratorium was declared. So it is fallacious to say if only we would forego any testing of any kind, then the other countries would forego it as well. History shows that is a fallacious argument.

My point is let's not get into the scary discussion of reopening the nuclear window with an amendment that would prohibit us from continuing to study something that all of our defense people say we need to continue to study, and that is whether an existing weapon could be used to destroy a target we may need to destroy at some time in the future. As long as Congress has the ultimate say as to whether we would proceed with the development or deployment of the weapon--and we have not done that--it is absolutely not necessary for us to adopt an amendment such as this that would cripple us from even looking into the subject. That would be a Luddite position for a country like the United States with all of the responsibilities we have to take.

I urge my colleagues to vote against this amendment when we have the opportunity to do so.