Floor Statements

The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Brownback).

The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Brownback).

Reserving the right to object, I apologize. Did Senator Corker ask a unanimous consent request?

But to return to the treaty upon its disposition; is that correct?

Might I ask the Senator from Tennessee whether he talked with one of the Senators from South Carolina about this?

I do not have any objections as long as we return to the treaty so those who have amendments to the treaty will at least have their rights protected.

I will not object. I simply note that I think we will need an understanding that we will work with our other interested colleagues on a way forward on all of these issues. Having expressed that as a matter of good faith, I suspect we can do that.

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Bunning), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. DeMint), the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Isakson), the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk), and the Senator from Ohio (Mr. Voinovich).

Further, if present and voting, the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. DeMint) would have voted ``yea'' and the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Bunning) would have voted ``yea.''

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Bunning), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. DeMint), the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Isakson), the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Kirk), and the Senator from Ohio (Mr. Voinovich).

Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Bunning) would have voted ``yea'' and the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. DeMint) would have voted ``yea.''

Could I be advised after I have spoken for 5 minutes.

Mr. President, the DREAM Act is an attempt to cure a symptom of a problem. The symptom is that some children have been brought here illegally and they are suffering the consequences of being illegal aliens under American law. The problem is illegal immigration, which causes all manner of other bad results or problems. There are huge costs to society and any number of personal tragedies as a result of illegal immigration, the DREAM Act problems being only one subset.

Just a few days ago, another Border Patrol agent was killed in the State of Arizona, illustrating again another kind of personal tragedy from illegal immigration. Unfortunately, treating symptoms of the problem might make us feel better because we are doing something for a particular group of folks, but it can allow the underlying problem to metastisize. Unfortunately, that is what is happening at our border.

In some respects, the problems are getting worse, not better. Our citizens have a right to be safe and secure. Right now that situation, at least in my home State, does not pertain. So the first point I make is that we have to secure the border and stop illegal immigration. When we do, there will not be more problems for people associated with education that would be solved by the DREAM Act or other problems associated with illegal immigration. We will have excluded or we will have limited the nature of the problem to simply those who are here now and then, obviously, we can deal with that problem. That is the first point.

Second, this bill is brought to us with no hearings or markup in a committee. It is the sixth version of a DREAM Act. I worked with Senator Durbin on another version of the DREAM Act in connection with the comprehensive immigration law. There are problems with this bill. Those problems need to be dealt with. But the bill comes before us under a condition in which there can be no amendments. There needs to be amendments.

In the remaining 3 minutes or so I have, let me simply identify 10 particular problems we need to deal with and can only be dealt with by getting together and working it out by having amendments, which we can't do in the short time we have.

The bill would immediately put an estimated 1 to 2 million illegal immigrants on a path to citizenship, a number which will only grow because there is neither a cap nor sunset in the legislation. These people would then have access to a variety of other Federal programs, Federal welfare programs, student loans, Federal work study programs, and the like.

Third, the entire time such individuals are in conditional status, they are not required to attend college or join the military. That is a common misperception. Only when such individuals seek to get lawful permanent resident status do they then have to proceed to complete the requirements for education or military.

Fourth, the education and military requirements can be waived altogether, including for criminal activity--in other words, people who have a serious criminal background.

Five, chain migration, which is something we dealt with in the legislation in 2009, would result from this legislation because once the citizenship is obtained, the individuals would have the right to legally petition for a green card for their family members. That means the numbers could easily triple from the 2 million plus estimated right now.

Sixth, the bill has no age limit for aliens in removal status. This is supposed to be for children, but there is no age limit for people who are in removal proceedings and simply file an application for status under the DREAM Act to stay their removal. That has to be fixed.

Seven, the bill forbids the Secretary of Homeland Security from removing any alien who has a pending application for conditional nonimmigrant status regardless of age or criminal status. In other words, it provides a safe haven for illegal immigrants, some of whom we would not want to allow to stay in the United States and should be subject to removal.

Eighth, the DREAM Act as written provides that applicants who are currently ineligible under current law for status of a green card could nevertheless be eligible under this act. The reason is because some of the grounds of waiver that exist in this act do not exist under current law, but they could be waived for DREAM Act aliens--things such as document fraud, alien absconders, and marriage fraud.

Nine, the act does not actually require that an illegal alien finish any type of degree other than a high school GPD. To receive green card status, the bill requires only that the alien complete 2 years at an institution of higher education. There is not a requirement that they ever receive a degree of any kind. The requirement is that they needn't receive a degree of any kind. This is important.

For those who want to go into the military, there is the requirement for 2 years of service in the uniformed services. When you enlist in the service today, you are enlisting for a commitment of 4 years.

Finally, removal, if it can be demonstrated as resulting in a hardship either to the applicant or to a spouse, the requirements for education can be waived altogether. So a sympathetic Secretary of Homeland Security could obviously create a situation in which there is essentially just a waiver for people to come into the United States.

For these reasons, I urge colleagues to vote against cloture on the DREAM Act.

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Bunning), the Senator from New Hampshire (Mr. Gregg), and the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch).

Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Bunning) would have voted ``nay,'' and the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch) would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Bunning), the Senator from New Hampshire (Mr. Gregg), and the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch).

Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch) would have voted ``nay,'' and the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Bunning) would have voted ``nay.''

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Bunning), the Senator from New Hampshire (Mr. Gregg), and the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch).

Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Bunning) would have voted ``yea'' and the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch) would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. President, might I join in this colloquy?

I do not think there needs to be any reference to time for debate. If I could just make a brief statement, I think the purpose for this unanimous consent agreement was to allow Members, by unanimous consent, to speak as in morning business on the don't ask, don't tell bill prior to a vote on that at----

At 3 o'clock, but that we would be on the treaty, and if people did not want to talk about the don't ask, don't tell, then we would be on the McCain-Barrasso amendment, and that debate would conclude before 3 o'clock, and then the vote on the McCain-Barrasso amendment would follow the vote on the don't ask, don't tell.

Mr. President, I note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the remaining Republican time be equally divided between Senators McCain, Kyl, and Sessions.

Mr. President, during one of the last votes, a Member came to me and said: I have not been able to follow this debate. What exactly is the McCain-Barrasso amendment?

With all of the to-and-fro--having votes on different subjects, then going back to the START treaty, then going back to a vote on don't ask, don't tell, then finally a vote on the McCain-Barrasso amendment--I thought it would be good to recapitulate a little bit on what exactly the McCain-Barrasso amendment is and why it is important.

What the amendment does is it removes language that relates to missile defense from the preamble. This treaty was supposed to be about offensive strategic weapons, not about missile defense. In fact, we were told by an administration spokesman that it wouldn't relate to missile defense, but sure enough, there the words are. Why are they there? They are there because the Russians insisted they be there. Why did they insist they be there? Because for decades the Russians have been fixated on U.S. missile defense, trying to find ways to reduce the effect of our missile defense on Russian strategic capabilities. They tried it at Reykjavik with President Reagan. He said no. They tried it again in the first START treaty. They tried it again in the Moscow Treaty of 2002. And they have tried it again here.

The difference between this treaty and the previous times is that the United States always pushed back and said: No, we are going to rely on missile defense. It is the moral thing to do. We are not going to get into quid pro quos with you where we have to reduce our missile defense if you reduce your strategic offensive weapons or some other agreement like that.

In the START I treaty, when the Russians said in their signing statement: We find this interrelationship, and the United States should not advance its missile defense capabilities, the United States pushed back strongly in our statement and said no, that would not be a grounds for withdrawal from the treaty and the Russians need to understand that. They never did withdraw even though we did withdraw from the ABM Treaty so we could build missile defenses.

Well, once again, they have put it in the preamble this time and then, in their signing statement, made very clear their intent that the interrelationship between the two means that if our missile defenses are ever developed to a point where they consider it qualitatively or quantitatively better than it is currently, then they would have the right to withdraw from the treaty; that that would qualify as one of the exceptional circumstances under article XIV, which is the withdrawal clause of the treaty. Why do they want to do that? Obviously to put pressure on the United States not to develop our missile defenses in a way they don't want. They will threaten to withdraw from the treaty if we begin to do that. Some Presidents--I suspect the existing President, for example--would therefore be very wary of going forward with missile defense plans if that means the Russians would withdraw from the treaty.

My colleague Senator Kerry says: Well, the preamble is a meaningless document. It is a throwaway document. It doesn't mean that much. But he also says: However, if we change one comma in the preamble, it will be a treaty-killing amendment.

At first, I said: Well, both of those things can't be true. It can't be both meaningless and of ultimate importance, that it would kill the treaty if we changed it.

On reflection, I think Senator Kerry actually has it right, partially. To the United States, it is meaningless. Our negotiators didn't care what the Russians put in there. It doesn't mean anything to us, but it means everything to the Russians, and that is why I think Senator Kerry is right.

This would be a big problem for the Russians. Why is that so? Because even though we were willing to walk away from that commitment we had always made in the past that there wouldn't be this connection between defense and offense, the Russians got it in here, and it means everything to them because it creates the predicate for their withdrawal from the treaty, and that is what they are trying to establish.

I will close this point by quoting from Dr. Condoleezza Rice, who wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which she said we needed to do something about this in our ratification process. She said there are legitimate concerns that must be addressed in the ratification process.

I am quoting now:

The Senate must make absolutely clear that in ratifying

this treaty, the U.S. is not reestablishing the Cold War link

between offensive forces and missile defenses. New START's

preamble is worrying in this regard as it recognizes the

interrelationship between the two.

What this language from Senators Barrasso and McCain does is simply remove that language from the preamble, thereby removing the thorn, removing the contention, the potential and I would say almost certain conflict that is due to arise between our two countries when the time comes that we do build a missile defense that the Russians don't want.

They say: We are going to withdraw from the treaty.

We say: You can't do that; that is not an extraordinary circumstance.

They say: Yes it is. We identified it as such at the time we signed the treaty, and we are going to leave the treaty.

And then the U.S. President has a dilemma: Do we pull back on our missile defenses or allow the Russians to withdraw from the treaty and all that will portend?

That is why this is important. The amendment cures the problem by simply removing that language from the preamble.

In the remaining time, I wish to briefly respond to four points the President made in his weekly address today relating generally to the same subject.

One of the first points he made is he talked about the number of nuclear

weapons--about 25,000 on each side--and the decades that have ensued since the Cold War. Those numbers have come down dramatically, and he said that progress would not have been possible without strategic arms control treaties.

Yes, it would have. It was happening anyway. Both sides were willing to draw both of their delivery vehicles and warheads down because they couldn't afford to keep them. In fact, after the end of the Cold War, the United States, under President Bush, said: We are reducing ours, and Russia, you can do whatever you want to do.

We knew they couldn't afford to keep theirs any more than we could keep ours, and they weren't reducing theirs.

The Russians came to us and said: Gee, we need a treaty.

We said: Why? We don't care how many you have. We are reducing ours.

Eventually, we said: OK. If you want a treaty, fine.

It was a three-page treaty, but it had no connections with missile defenses or anything the Russians wanted.

The point is, it didn't require a treaty for us to bring those levels down.

How about the delivery vehicles? This treaty actually fixes the number of delivery vehicles above where the Russians are right now. They could actually build up to the level of about 140, as I recall, to get up to the level of 700.

The point is, both countries are reducing the levels to the point that we need, not because of an arms control treaty but because it is in our national interests to do so.

Secondly, the President said that without this treaty, we will risk turning back the progress we have made in our relationship with Russia. I will just repeat what I have said before. Secretary Kissinger and others who have spoken to this point have always warned: Don't predicate the support for a treaty on improving your relationship with someone. The treaty should relate to reducing arms or whatever the subject of the treaty is. It should not be based on anything other than that or you get into a morass of always trying to please the other side and risking that they will withdraw from the treaty.

Third, the President said that it is about the safety and security of the United States of America. I have yet for anybody to tell me what threat we are reducing by agreeing with the Russians that both of us are going to reduce our delivery vehicles and warheads. Actually, the Russians don't have to reduce theirs; they could actually build up under the treaty. I don't think we see any big threat there.

Finally, the President said that every minute we drag our feet is a minute we have no inspectors on the ground at those Russian nuclear sites. We just talked about the fact that we have this reset relationship with the Russians, and we need to continue these good relationships, but we can't trust them, so we have to get our folks on the ground verifying what is going on right now. As I pointed out before, the administration created this problem on its own. We could have had a bridging agreement. We could have simply extended the verification provisions of the previous START treaty, but the Russians didn't want to do that, we are told. Fine, they didn't want to do that. That doesn't mean we had to agree that we will abide by their wishes when it comes to verification.

My colleague says: Well, you can't get them to do something, so we signed the treaty the way the Russians wanted in this regard, and we just have to live with that. The administration might have to live with that, but the Senate is not a rubberstamp, and it seems to me the Senate has a right to say: You let the verification procedures lapse; you didn't have to do that.

Senator Lugar had a bill that related to the extension of the legal regime whereby both sides would be able to continue to have presence in the other country. We knew that was a problem at the time. For some reason, the administration didn't pursue it--I suppose because the Russians said no, but that doesn't mean the U.S. Senate has to say: OK, the Russians just say no, and I guess we have to go along with that.

The point here is that I don't think any of the arguments President Obama has made require that we ratify this treaty this week. I would urge my colleagues to seriously consider what Dr. Condoleezza Rice has said, what Senator McCain and others have said here about the necessity of cleaning up this preamble so that we don't reestablish the link with missile defense and inhibit U.S. ability to proceed with missile defense plans in the future.

Mr. President, how much time is remaining?

Mr. President, is there any time remaining on the Democratic side?

Is there anyone who would like to take the 25 seconds?

Senator Levin will take the remaining 25 seconds?

Mr. President, to say the treaty doesn't constrain the United States misses the point of the argument we have been trying to make over the course of the last day and a half.

What the Russians have done is establish a legal pretext for withdrawal from the treaty. They have been very clever about it, and up to the time we had been told the President had sent us a letter, there was no pushback from the United States.

I haven't seen this letter, so it is a little hard to comment on it. It has been given to us 15 minutes before the vote is supposed to start. It hasn't been shared with us. We have no idea what all it says. We have Senator Kerry's quotation of certain parts of it. It is obviously a last-ditch effort to try to win votes or preclude an amendment from passing. It shows the administration is scrambling and making it up as it goes along. That is not the way to deal with a serious subject such as this.

Does the letter commit to the GBI--or the ground-based missile-- backup for the phased adaptive approach, as was originally announced? Well, I don't know whether it says that. Does it repudiate the signing statement of the United States Department of State issued by Secretary Tauscher, which of course conflicts with the letter and is the official position of the U.S. Government? Does it conflict with the briefing in Lisbon, where the phased adaptive approach was discussed, and revealed deployment of the first three phases but the fourth phase only being available? When will the deployment occur?

The letter, apparently, says we will have effective defenses-- whatever that means. What does that mean? When would those effective defenses be deployed? Iran intelligence tells us they will have an ICBM by 2015--an ICBM that would require something like the GBI to intercept. But we are told the

GBI is--well, A, we are not told whether the GBI is a contingent backup plan; and, B, we are not told whether it will be ready before 2017, which I find strange. Because I think we already have 24 GBIs in Alaska and California, and I don't know why we can't build some more to deploy in Europe.

So I don't know what to make of this letter. Obviously, it comes at the last minute and hasn't been sent to us, and I don't see how we can base a vote on such a letter.

The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Bunning), the Senator from New Hampshire (Mr. Gregg), and the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch).

Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Utah (Mr. Hatch) would have voted ``nay,'' and the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. Bunning) would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. President, I think, having spoken to a couple colleagues, it is quite likely the first amendment that will be offered, relatively soon, will be on the treaty itself so that issue will not have been--we will have time to work the question out that Senator Kerry and Senator Corker have been talking about.

Senator Kerry and I were involved in a discussion about missile defense last evening. I think that will be probably further debated in connection with the first amendment that is likely to be offered. So let me turn to another matter that is of great concern to some of us and I think will require some resolution, either in an amendment of the treaty or preamble or in the resolution of ratification, and that is the limitation that was placed on our potential prompt global strike-- conventional global strike weapon. This is a matter on which the Senate gave its advice. Our role, of course, is advice and consent. In the last Defense bill, section 1251 of the fiscal year 2010 NDAA, we included a statement that the New START treaty should not include any limitations on advanced conventional systems, otherwise known as conventional prompt global strike.

For the purposes of this, let me refer to that now as CPGS. Despite the assurances from some in the administration that wouldn't happen, it did happen. There is both limiting language and language in the preamble that sets the stage for further limitations on CPGS. We were clear about this because I believe we are going to need this. General Chilton has said the same thing. First, let me make it clear, what we are talking about is a conventional warhead on top which is a missile that has ICBM-like capabilities, that can quickly reach a spot a long way away to deliver a nonnuclear warhead.

With the WMD and terrorist and other rogue state kinds of threats that exist today, our administration and many of the rest of us have concluded this is a capability we need.

Let me quote General Chilton:

To provide the President a better range of non-nuclear

options against rapidly emerging threats, we also require a

deployed, conventional prompt global strike capability to

hold at risk targets in denied territory that can only be

rapidly struck today with nuclear weapon platforms.

That is the rationale for it. That is the administration's statement, and I agree with that.

The Senate provided its advice in Section 1251 of the Defense bill, and here is what Under Secretary of Defense Tauscher assured Senators. She said:

[T]here is no effect for prompt global strike in the

treaty.

A March 26, 2010, White House fact sheet assured that:

. . . the treaty does not contain any constraints on

testing, development, or deployment of . . . current or

planned United States long-range strike capabilities.

Obviously, that statement was meant to assure us that CPGS would not be constrained or limited. But the kicker in there were the words ``current'' or ``planned.'' That is because there is no current CPGS, and the administration is studying what particular system or systems to move forward with.

So while technically correct that there is nothing current or planned, it is also true the constraints in the treaty will limit whatever system we eventually come up with. The question, therefore, is what happens when, as General Chilton urges us, we develop a CPGS in the future.

Incidentally, General Chilton is the head of our Strategic Command. He is the person responsible for understanding what the threats are and how we can deliver the right ordnance in the right place with perishable intelligence in a very constrained atmosphere, and that is why his views on this are very important. Yet we conceded to Russian demands to place limits on CPGS.

How was this done? The Russians were very clever about this. They knew they were not going to get the United States to back off our plan, so what they said was: You will have to count any of those missiles against the 700 launcher limit on your nuclear delivery vehicles.

That is not a good deal. Most of us believe the 700 is too low to begin with. What we will have to do is, for every single one of these, we will have to subtract that number from the 700. So if you have 25, now you are down to 675 launchers for nuclear weapons.

That is a constraint. There is no way to describe that in any other terms. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov said, on March 29:

For the first time, this treaty sets the ceiling, not only

for strategic nuclear delivery vehicles, but also for those

ones which will be fitted with nonnuclear warheads. The U.S.

is carrying out this work, which is why it would be extremely

important to set a limit precisely on these types of weapons.

I think he was more straightforward about this than the spokesman for the administration. He said: Sure, we put limits on it, and the United States is moving forward on it. That is why we wanted to put limits on it.

So despite the relationship between strategic and tactical nuclear weapons--but we would not dare deal with tactical weapons either in the preamble or the treaty. Yet in another concession to the Russians, the preamble to the treaty notes that the parties are ``mindful of the impact of conventionally armed ICBMs and SLBMs on strategic stability.''

Well, first of all, I do not agree with that statement. What is the impact? The impact assumes that we cannot segregate the two, which can be done. Second, are we to believe that tactical nuclear weapons, which the Russians enjoy a huge advantage--some say a 10-to-1 advantage over us--have no impact on strategic stability while conventionally armed ballistic missiles do?

What do Russia's neighbors think of that argument, I might wonder. Clearly, these limits on CPGS and the dangerous language in the preamble were concessions to the Russians. It is not in our interest because we do intend to go forward with this. I think, taken to its extreme, the treaty could prevent the United States from acquiring the nonnuclear strategic capabilities necessary to counter today's principal

threats, terrorists and regional adversaries armed with weapons of mass destruction.

We recognize the resolution of ratification has language on this. It does not rescind, and could not rescind, the specific limitation on counting conventionally armed ballistic missiles or mitigate the potential for severe disagreement with the Russians over this issue in the very near future.

I do not think we should ratify a treaty without knowing what kind of CPGS systems may be counted and how that will affect the nuclear triad at the much reduced levels now of 700 delivery vehicles. According to the Department of Defense, an assessment on treaty implications for CPGS proposals will not be ready until 2011. So under the resolution approved by the committee, Senators will not know until the treaty enters into force, when, obviously, it would be too late.

So the bottom line is, with a 700-launch vehicle limit, and CPGS counting against that limit, we will have fewer nuclear delivery vehicles than we negotiated for in the treaty, and that limit will be a disincentive to develop the CPGS as a result.

Second, the language in the preamble regarding the impact of CPGS on strategic stability opens the door to further Russian pressure against the United States not to develop and deploy these systems. Why should we accept these constraints in a treaty that was about nuclear weapons?

Now, I think Senator Kerry had three main points, if I distilled it correctly. First was, well, the Russians wanted to limit us from doing this at all. So, in effect, we should be thankful the only limitation was on the number. I do not think that is a very good argument. As I said, we wanted to talk tactical. The Russians said no, so we did not talk tactical in the strategic treaty. There is no reason why, in a strategic nuclear treaty, we need to talk conventional arms either. But we agreed to do that.

Another argument that Senator Kerry--well, it goes along with some in Russia who have said: Well, it would be very hard for us to know whether a missile launch was a strategic nuclear weapon or one of these conventional Prompt Global Strike weapons.

That is sort of a justification for the Russian position. But most of the experts with whom I have talked say that is not a limitation we need to worry about at all. We could easily agree with the Russians in various ways to assuage their concerns. For example, we can deploy the conventionally armed ballistic missiles in areas that are distinct from our ICBM field, allow them to periodically conduct onsite inspections under separate agreement. That could be done. And there are other mechanisms as well. The key point is that we need these capabilities. I do not think we should limit them in an arms control treaty dealing with strategic nuclear weapons.

The other argument is, well, we are not going to develop these for maybe 10 years, which is outside the life of the treaty. First of all, we should not have constraints on developing them at any point. We should not create the precedent that whatever we do with Prompt Global Strike is going to count against our nuclear delivery limits, which is what this treaty does.

But, finally, there are programs that are being studied right now in the United States that would allow us to put the Prompt Global Strike capability into service quite quickly. We need it; we need it now. For example, there have been proposals for weapons on conventional Trident missiles, to cite one example, that would count and could be deployed in less than 10 years. The National Academy notified Congress in May of 2007 that conventional Trident missiles could be operationally deployed within 2 years of funding. And there are others.

My point is, we should not be saying: Well, because certain things are not going to happen for 10 years, the treaty lasts 10 years, therefore, we do not have to worry about it. It takes a long time to plan these systems, and if they are going to be constrained by what is in the treaty today, they are likely going to be constrained by provisions in future treaties as well.

This is a bad precedent. It is one of the reasons we think before we were to proceed with this treaty, we would need to have some resolution either in the preamble or the treaty or the resolution of ratification that would give us assurance that we could develop Prompt Global Strike without detracting from our ability to deliver nuclear warheads as well.

I would like to turn to another matter. I mentioned briefly when I began my conversation yesterday morning about the treaty--and that is, that looked at in a larger context, some people have said: Well, this treaty, in and of itself, may not put that many constraints on the United States. Therefore, they are willing to support it. I appreciate the rationale behind the argument.

But there is an argument that this treaty has to be considered in its context. That is one of the reasons the people are concerned about the missile defense issue. But another element of context is the whole modernization issue, which is directly related to, but in a slightly different way relevant to the consideration of the treaty.

But the other aspect of context is that this is a treaty seen by the administration as moving a step forward toward the President's vision of a world without nuclear weapons. There are a lot of people who disagree with that vision and who believe if this treaty is ratified, then, in effect, the administration's very next step is going to be to begin negotiations to do that.

Indeed, administration spokesmen have said precisely that. Secretary Clinton, when New START was signed, talked about the President's vision of the world without nuclear weapons, and said: We are making real progress toward that goal.

There have been numerous administration spokesmen who have made the same point. I will just mention three. Under Secretary Tauscher, whom I referred to earlier; Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller, who actually negotiated this treaty; and Assistant Secretary of Defense Alexander Vershbow have all indicated the next round of negotiations the administration intends to engage in, beginning immediately after the ratification of the START treaty, is the march toward the President's vision of a world without nuclear weapons.

I said I do not share that vision. I do not share it for two reasons: I think it is difficult, if not impossible, to achieve, and I question whether it is a good idea at all. I do not think anybody believes that is something that is achievable in anybody's lifetime, even if it is ever achievable.

But, right now, focusing on this diverts attention, as I think this treaty does, from the efforts to deal with the true threats of today: countries such as Iran and North Korea and nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists. As I said--in fact, let me quote Dr. Rice, who just recently wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. December 7 is the date. She said:

Nuclear weapons will be with us for a long time. After this

treaty, our focus must be on stopping dangerous

proliferators, not on further reductions in the U.S. and

Russian strategic arsenals, which are really no threat to

each other or to international stability.

I agree with that. Let me quote George Kennan, who wrote this a long time ago, but I think it applies today:

The evil of these Utopian enthusiasms was not only or even

primarily the wasted time, the misplaced emphasis, the

encouragement of false hopes. The evil lay primarily in the

fact that those enthusiasms distracted our gaze from the real

things that were happening. The cultivation of these Utopian

schemes, flattering to our own image of ourselves, took place

at the expense of our feeling for reality.

I would apply that to today. While we make a big hullabaloo about signing a treaty between Russia and the United States, countries that are no longer enemies, who are bringing down our strategic arsenals because it is in our own self-interest to do so, and ignore the threats--and I should not say ``ignore'' because that is to suggest the administration and others have not spent time working on the problem of Iran and North Korea. I ask, however, how much success we have had and whether we need to devote more attention and effort to resolving those problems that are immediately in front of us rather than dealing with a nonproblem in the START treaty with Russia.

Also, I would ask my colleagues to just reflect for a moment on what such a world would be like. You can divide, at least in my lifetime, barely, pre-August 1945, in the last century, and post-

August 1945. World War II claimed between 56 and 81 million lives. It is astounding to me we cannot even get a more accurate count of that. That is how destructive and disruptive and cataclysmic World War II was.

But it was ended with two atomic weapons. Since that time, the major powers--Russia, the United States, China--have not fired a shot in anger against each other. Major wars such as World War II, World War I--these kinds of wars have been avoided at least in part because the countries that possess these weapons know they cannot be used against each other in a conflict.

That is the deterrent value. Would it be nice if they had never been invented? Yes. Except for what they accomplished in ending World War II. But they cannot be uninvented, and the reality is, today it does provide a deterrent for the United States to have these weapons, and 31 other countries in the world rely on that deterrent.

So I would just ask those who say it would be wonderful if these weapons did not exist, what would the world look like today, with all of the conflicts that exist, and the opportunity for conventional warfare, unconstrained by the deterrent of a nuclear retaliation?

Nobel Prize winner and arms control expert Thomas Schelling recently observed that: In a world without nuclear weapons, countries would maintain an ability to rearm, and that ``every crisis would be a nuclear crisis . . . the urge to preempt would dominate. . .it would be a nervous world.''

Well, to be sure, and that is an understatement. New York Times columnist Roger Cohen wrote:

A world without nuclear weapons sounds nice, but of course

that was the world that brought us World War I and World War

II. If you like the sound of that, the touchy-feely `Ground

Zero' bandwagon is probably for you.

General Brent Scowcroft, who is actually a proponent of this treaty wrote:

Second, given the clear risks and the elusive benefits

inherent in additional deep cuts, the burden of proof should

be on those who advocate such reductions to demonstrate

exactly how and why such cuts would serve to enhance U.S.

security. Absent such a demonstration, we should not pursue

additional cuts in the mistaken belief that fewer is ipso

facto better.

This is a point that was also made by the Bipartisan Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, the so-called Perry-Schlesinger Commission, in which they concluded:

All of the commission members all believe that reaching the

ultimate goal of global nuclear elimination would require a

fundamental change in geopolitics.

Again, quite an understatement. As I said, even the notion that we would be immediately pursuing, trying to reach this goal after the START treaty is ratified is to bring into question--at least I would suggest--in the minds of the 31 countries that depend on our nuclear deterrent for their security, whether this is a wise idea. There are plenty of folks around the world who have commented on this, national leaders who have commented on this.

Let me just quote a couple to illustrate the breadth of concern about it.

The President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy:

It--

Referring to the French nuclear deterrent--

is neither a matter of prestige nor a question of rank, it is

quite simply the nation's life insurance policy.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record, at the conclusion of my remarks, a list of comments and quotations by people who have spoken to this. Let me just cite maybe one.

Bill Kristol, who is, I think, a very astute observer of these matters, wrote in the Washington Post in April of last year:

Yet to justify a world without nuclear weapons, what Obama

would really have to envision is a world without war, or

without threats of war . . . The danger is that the allure of

a world without nuclear weapons can be a distraction--even an

excuse for not acting against real nuclear threats. So while

Obama talks of a future without nuclear weapons, the

trajectory we are on today is toward a nuclear- and

missile-capable North Korea and Iran--and a far more

dangerous world.

The point of all of the people whom I don't quote here but will include for the Record is that the genie will not be put back in the bottle. Countries will have nuclear weapons. As one of them pointed out, if we were ever, by some magic, able to rid the world of nuclear weapons, the threat of one nation quickly acquiring them would be the most destabilizing thing one could imagine. The reality is, it is not going to happen. The United States moving toward that goal is not going to influence anyone, including North Korea or Syria or Iran or other countries that may mean the United States harm.

For those who believe this is a bad idea and who would like to see the President step back from that goal and instead focus more convincingly on dealing with the threats that are near term, ratification of this treaty presents a real problem, especially when the administration talks about the very next thing they want to do after beginning those negotiations is to bring to the Senate the comprehensive test ban treaty which this Senate defeated 11 years ago, and there are even stronger reasons to reject it today.

The bottom line is, one can argue that the dramatic reduction in the arsenals of Russia and United States of strategic weapons has been a good thing. It certainly has been an economically justifiable action for both countries because they are costly. But it has had no discernible effect on nuclear proliferation. We have had more proliferation since, after the Cold War, we began to reduce these weapons. They are unlikely, between the United States and Russia, to be a cause of future conflict.

It is time for global disarmament, starting with President Obama, to recognize this reality and channel their considerable efforts and good intentions toward the true dangers of which I have spoken.

I would like to address one other subject, if I may.

Mr. President, I would be happy to do that.

I am always happy to yield to my friend, and we always engage in interesting colloquies. I had indicated that, as a predicate to amendments, several of us had opening statements we would like to give. I am ready to go to amendments, but there are a couple of things I would like to say before we do.

I will enjoy the colloquy we have when we do get around to it.

Mr. President, we don't have time to get into a lot of detail, but there is the question of verification. This is one of the other major matters people have written about, including Senator Bond, who is the ranking Republican on the Intelligence Committee. It is going to be important for the Senate to have an executive session to go over intelligence, classified information that relates to the question of verification and past Russian compliance or noncompliance with agreements they have made with the United States.

In this short period, I wish to rebut something that continues to be repeated and is simply not true or at least the implication is not true--that we have to do this treaty because we need the verification provisions. The implication is that they are good and strong and will be effective. They won't. The verification provisions are far less than we had in the START I treaty. In the view of many people, they are not going to be effective.

Secretary of State James Baker, who testified early on this treaty, said:

[The verification mechanism in the New START treaty] does

not appear as rigorous or extensive as the one that verified

the numerous and diverse treaty obligations and prohibitions

under START I. This complex part of the treaty is even more

crucial when fewer deployed nuclear warheads are allowed than

were allowed in the past.

My colleague Senator McCain said:

The New START treaty's permissive approach to verification

will result in less transparency and create additional

challenges for our ability to monitor Russia's current and

future capabilities.

Senator Bond said:

New START suffers from fundamental verification flaws that

no amount of tinkering around the edges can fix.

He also said:

The Select Committee on Intelligence has been looking at

this issue closely over the past several months . . . There

is no doubt in my mind that the United States cannot reliably

verify the treaty's 1,550 limit on deployed warheads.

In very simple terms, the reason he is saying that is that there is no overall verification of those warheads. We can look at an individual missile and see how many warheads are on the top, but that doesn't tell us whether they are in compliance with 1,550. That is one of the fundamental flaws.

The amount of telemetry, unencrypted telemetry, from Russian missile tests is reduced to zero unless the Russians decide to give us more than zero.

There is no longer onsite monitoring of the mobile missile final assembly facility at Votkinsk, which has existed for all these years under START I. The Russians didn't want us hanging around there anymore. We didn't even fight for that. It is a critical verification issue with respect to potentially a railcar or other mobile missiles the Russians will be developing. Secretary Gates spoke to that eloquently with respect to the verification provisions in START I. There are fewer onsite inspections. And I can't imagine the Russians would declare a facility, which is the only place we get to visit, and then be doing something nefarious at that particular declared facility. It is the undeclared facilities that represent a big part of the problem.

Former CIA Director James Woolsey said:

New START's verification provisions will provide little or

no help in detecting illegal activity at locations the

Russians fail to declare, are off-limits to U.S. inspectors,

or are underground or otherwise hidden from our satellites.

He makes the point, when he refers to satellites, those are sometimes referred to as our national assets. They do good and they tell us a lot, but they can't possibly tell us all we need to know. That is why we had much more vigorous verification under START I.

There are other things we will be discussing when we get into the classified session on this, but let me conclude this point and my presentation with this reality. We will find--I can say this much, at least, in open session--that the Russians have violated major provisions of most of the agreements we have entered into with them for a long, long time: START I, the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Biological Weapons Convention, the conventional forces in Europe treaty, the Open Skies Treaty, and, by the way, others I won't mention.

The concern would be for a breakout. Today, Russia and the United States are not enemies. That is why a lot of this is of less concern than it ordinarily would be. The big concern is just that ultimate concern of a breakout. What if all of a sudden they decided to confront us over some issue relating to a country on their border or something else and we were not aware they had gained a significant advantage over us? Again, the preparation of the United States to deal with that takes a long time. I won't get into it here, but it takes a long time. That is why verification and intelligence is so important.

I have talked about two things this morning: the conventional global strike and the verification issues, as well as the general concept of a world without nuclear weapons, which, unfortunately, this treaty, at least in the minds of a lot of people, is viewed as a predicate for and which would be very dangerous.

There are some other issues I eventually wish to speak to, including the whole question of whether, as a rationale for this treaty, the reset relations with Russia have really provided very much help to the United States and whether this treaty should be used as a way of assuaging Russian sensitivities or convincing them to cooperate with us on other things.

Others have talked about tactical nuclear weapons, and there will be amendments we will be offering to deal with that, and we can discuss that later.

There is also the very important matter of the Bilateral Consultative Commission, recognizing that this group of Russian and American negotiators could in secret change terms of the treaty. The resolution of ratification provided for a notice provision, but it is not adequate. I am hoping my colleagues will agree with us on that. We will provide a longer term for notification, with an ability of the Senate to reject terms that are deemed central to the treaty and for which we really need to be providing our consent or nonconsent.

Then finally, something I alluded to here, which is that the United States really ought to be spending more time dealing with the threats that I think are more real to us today, threats coming from places such as Iran and North Korea, rather than assuming that our top priority is to rush it right up to Christmas in order to get it done.

We will have more opportunity to talk about all of those matters later. Hopefully this afternoon, we can begin debating amendments, and we do need to get squared away the issue that Senator Corker and Senator Kerry talked about, which is how we go about doing that in a way that does not cut off people's rights to offer amendments which are to the resolution of ratification.

Exhibit 1

Additional Statements on the Folly of Zero

``The presumption that U.S. movement toward nuclear

disarmament will deliver nonproliferation success is a

fantasy. On the contrary, the U.S. nuclear arsenal has itself

been the single most important tool for nonproliferation in

history, and dismantling it would be a huge setback.'' \94\

``The Obama administration's push for nuclear disarmament

has a seductive intellectual and political appeal, but its

main points are in contradiction with reality. And when a

security policy is built on fantasy, someone usually gets

hurt.'' \95\

Kenneth Waltz, leading arms controller and professor

emeritus of political science at UC Berkeley: ``We now have

64 years of experience since Hiroshima. It's striking and

against all historical precedent that for that substantial

period, there has not been any war among nuclear states.''

\96\

``And even if Russia and China (and France, Britain,

Israel, India, and Pakistan) could be coaxed to abandon their

weapons, we'd still live with the fear that any of them could

quickly and secretly rearm.'' \97\

Secretary James Schlesinger, post-Reykjavik (1986):

``Nuclear arsenals are going to be with us as long as there

are sovereign states with conflicting ideologies. Unlike

Aladdin with his lamp, we have no way to force the nuclear

genie back into the bottle. A world without nuclear weapons

is a utopian dream.'' \98\

Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France: ``It [the French

nuclear deterrent] is neither a matter of prestige nor a

question of rank, it is quite simply the nation's life

insurance policy.'' \99\

``The idea of a world free of nuclear weapons is not so

much an impossible dream as an impossible nightmare.'' \100\

``A world that was genuinely free of nuclear weapons would

look very different. War between big powers would once again

become thinkable. In previous eras, the rise and fall of

great powers has almost always been accompanied by war. The

main reason for hoping that the rise of China will be an

exception to this grisly rule is that both the U.S. and China

have nuclear weapons. They will have to find other ways to

act out their rivalries.'' \101\

William Kristol: ``Yet to justify a world without nuclear

weapons, what Obama would really have to envision is a world

without war, or without threats of war . . . The danger is

that the allure of a world without nuclear weapons can be a

distraction--even an excuse for not acting against real

nuclear threats . . . So while Obama talks of a future

without nuclear weapons, the trajectory we are on today is

toward a nuclear- and missile-capable North Korea and Iran--

and a far more dangerous world.'' \102\

``As long as a nukeless world remains wishful thinking and

pastoral rhetoric, we'll be all right. But if the Nobel

Committee truly cares about peace, its members will think a

little harder about trying to make it a reality. Open a

history book and you'll see what the modern world looks like

without nuclear weapons. It is horrible beyond description.''

\103\

``So when last we saw a world without nuclear weapons,

human beings were killing one another with such feverish

efficiency that they couldn't keep track of the victims to

the nearest 15 million. Over three decades of industrialized

war, the planet averaged about 3 million dead per year. Why

did that stop happening?'' \104\

``A world with nuclear weapons in it is a scary, scary

place to think about. The industrialized world without

nuclear weapons was a scary, scary place for real. But there

is no way to un-ring the nuclear bell. The science and

technology of nuclear weapons is widespread, and if nukes are

outlawed someday, only outlaws will have nukes.'' \105\

endnotes

\94\ Keith Payne, ``A Vision Shall Guide Them?'' National

Review. November 2, 2009.

\95\ Id.

\96\ Jonathan Tepperman, ``Why Obama Should Learn to Love

the Bomb.'' Newsweek. August 29,2009.

\97\ Id.

\98\ Sec. James Schlesinger, ``The Dangers of a Nuclear-

Free World.'' Time. October 27, 1986.

\99\ French President Nicolas Sarkozy Nuclear Policy

speech, March 21, 2008.

\100\ Gideon Rachman, ``A nuclear-free world? No Thanks.''

Financial Times. May 4, 2010.

\101\ Id.

\102\ William Kristol, ``A World Without Nukes--Just Like

1939.'' Washington Post. April 7, 2009.

\103\ David Von Drehle, ``Want Peace? Give a Nuke the

Nobel.'' Time. October 11, 2009.

\104\ Id.

\105\Id.

I think it is true, Senator Kerry said that under the precedents of the Senate, we first have to attempt to amend the treaty and the preamble, and to do otherwise or to mix the two up would require unanimous consent.

Mr. President, when the Senator says that happens automatically, if cloture is filed and invoked, then both amendments to the treaty, the preamble, and the resolution of ratification are cut off at that point, correct?

In other words, cloture cuts off both the resolution of ratification amendments as well as treaty and preamble amendments.

Mr. President, I would say to my colleague, maybe 10 minutes is all. I wish to respond to four particular points that have been made here.

Mr. President, I very strongly support the amendment offered by my colleagues, Senators McCain and Barrasso. The primary point here is the preamble has created a great deal of confusion and it will create discord between the two parties here--between the Russian Federation and the U.S. Government.

There is a built-in conflict, a big problem. It is a tumor here, and it is going to grow and eventually create a conflict between our two countries that frankly isn't necessary, and that is the purpose for removing this language from the preamble that creates this problem in the first place, that reestablishes the linkage between strategic offensive weapons--which are the subject of the treaty--and missile defenses, which are explicitly not the subject of the treaty.

My colleague Senator McCain pointed out that Secretary Rice had written an op-ed where she said one of the most concerning things-- worrisome, I think, was her word--about this treaty is that reestablishment of the linkage which the Bush administration had worked very hard to eliminate. In the Moscow Treaty of 2002 they had eliminated it, making it clear--even though the Russians wanted preamble language or treaty language connecting the two--they were not going to be connected by the United States. We intended to keep our missile defense plans totally separate and apart from any strategic offensive treaty.

The proponents here of this treaty and its language have made some arguments which I think I should respond to briefly. They will probably dwell on some of these again, but I have heard these arguments so far.

One that you hear over and over is that the treaty language is not binding. The simple response to that is: Fine, if it is not binding, then what is the big deal about amending it or simply eliminating this particular provision? Because it is pernicious, it is going to create a lot of problems in the future in terms of disagreements between the two countries--disagreements which are not necessary but which could escalate into a real problem in the relationship between the two countries. So if it is not binding, clearly there shouldn't be a big deal about amending the preamble.

Second, I did hear my colleague from Massachusetts the other day say: Well, these preambles are not that big a deal. They are mostly for domestic consumption. That may be true, but that is a two-way street. We have some domestic consumption here in the United States, too. The American people want the United States to be unconstrained in the development of our missile defenses, and we want to have a little comfort in this treaty that we are not going to be so constrained.

I am well aware of the language in the resolution of ratification, which is simply a statement that says the treaty doesn't limit U.S. missile defenses. That is true, as far as it goes. But, of course, it begs the question of how the Russians interpret the preamble. And they interpret it--as I said 2 days ago, or yesterday, I guess--as a legally binding authority for the Russian Federation to leave the treaty based on its interpretation of extraordinary circumstances, allowing it under article XIV--the withdrawal clause--to withdraw from the treaty if the United States were to deploy missile defenses that qualitatively or quantitatively improve our condition vis-a-vis Russia, which clearly is going to happen if the United States pursues the plans that Secretary Gates has announced.

Of course, the real question is: In view of the Russian objections, will we in fact do that? And that is the pernicious aspect of this preamble. I am afraid, because the Russians have made such a big deal out of this, the Obama administration is backing away from what were announced as our plans for missile developments.

Third, I would point out the fact that this is a problem created by the administration. The Senate gave its advice in the Defense bill last year when we explicitly said don't include any limitations on missile defense. We also added prompt conventional global strike. So this language was negotiated notwithstanding a warning by the Senate that limitations on missile defense could create a problem in our consent to the treaty.

Fourth, the language, as I said, is inconsistent with--that is to say the language in the preamble is inconsistent with announced plans for U.S. missile defense. My colleague Senator Kerry quoted administration officials as saying, well, we briefed the Russians thoroughly on this. No doubt that is true. It also appears to be true the United States has begun to modify our announced intentions with regard to deployment of missile defense.

My colleague Senator Inhofe pointed out that in place of the ground- based interceptors that the Bush administration had planned to deploy in Poland, along with associated radars in the Czech Republic, to complement the ground-based interceptors already in California and Alaska, primarily dealing with the threat coming from east Asia, the administration announced that it would substitute a phased array--or, rather, a phased adaptive approach, which included, at least in its fourth phase, the potential for intercepting ICBMs that could come from Iran to the United States, but also, of course, anywhere else, including Russia.

That would clearly be a qualitative improvement of missile defenses vis-a-vis Russia, which under their interpretation of the preamble would allow them to withdraw from the treaty. We say no, it wouldn't. Oh no, wait, that was the START I treaty where we said no, it wouldn't. In the START I treaty, the unilateral statement of the United States rejected what the then-Soviets said. The language is almost the same.

The Soviets said: We don't want you to build missile defenses, and if you do, that is a ground for withdrawal from the treaty.

At that point, the United States said: No, it is not.

Did we say that this time? No, not a word. As my colleague Senator McCain said, the United States was silent; instead, in effect saying in our unilateral signing statement: You don't have anything to worry about because we are only going to develop missile defenses good against limited or regional threats. In other words, neither the ground-based interceptor we were going to deploy but President Obama pulled back from Europe nor the phased adaptive approach, which, in its final phase, could be effective against a Russian ICBM--apparently neither of those is going to be deployed.

The administration did not make an announcement to that effect, but they did appear to confirm it when they briefed, in Lisbon a couple of weeks ago, the NATO allies and Russia that the first three phases of the phased adaptive approach would be deployed, but the magic language wasn't used on

the fourth. They just said it would be available. Which is it? Are we, in fact, pulling our punches already before the treaty is even ratified because the Russians have objected to it? Isn't this exactly what Secretary Rice warned us about, saying she was worried that we had to, in this treaty, do something about the fact that the Russians had reconnected defense with offense?

That is exactly what the McCain and Barrasso amendment would do. It takes out this language which raises the question, the confusing interrelationship language between missile defense and missile offense, and it strikes the language that says that current U.S. missile defense is not a problem--of course laying open the whole question of whether what we do in the future will be a problem. That is what the McCain- Barrasso amendment would do.

(Mr. WARNER assumed the Chair)

I will be happy to yield to my colleague.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague for the question because it sets up a perfect reason why this amendment is necessary. The Russians interpret the preamble as the basis for their legal argument that they can withdraw from the treaty if we do what Secretary Gates has said we are going to do. What would a letter from the President potentially say? Either it is going to say we intend to go forward and develop and deploy the missile defenses--which would be seen by the Russians as contrary to their national interests, their supreme national interests, thus further laying a foundation for them to withdraw from the treaty--or the President would confirm the briefing at Lisbon and confirm the U.S. signing statement and say that we don't intend to deploy those, we only intend to deal with limited or regional threats, so the Russians have nothing to worry about. The Senate would be on record in an understanding accompanying the treaty that confirmed all of this. The Senate would at least be on record. But that doesn't commit the President.

I think the only answer to avoid the confusion and to avoid any future President having pressure from the Russians that they are going to withdraw is to just remove the language. That is the beauty by the author of the amendment--it pulls the thorn so the sting no longer can exist.

Mr. President, I certainly do, and obviously our defense planners worry about that as well.

Yes.

I certainly do.

I will terminate my conversation here by also adding one other point to my response to my colleague from Arizona about a letter from the President. The problem right now is that such a letter, if it confirmed we were going to move forward with a missile defense system adequate to protect the United States from an ICBM, from more than regional threats, would directly contradict our signing statement. What the President would have to do is say: I hereby reject or repudiate the signing statement that the State Department attached to the treaty when we signed it and state the U.S. position instead as--and then lay out his commitment to deploy a defense system adequate to protect the United States from an ICBM.

Mr. President, I could not agree more with my colleague from Arizona. There have been rumors swirling around here for 3 weeks--for example, when the tax legislation was being negotiated--that somehow or other there was some deal in the works to trade the extension of the existing tax rates for support of the START treaty. There was never any kind of a deal like that going on. No, this treaty stands or falls on its own merits.

The other thing I would say, however, is that I have made the point for a long time that one of the impediments to ratifying this treaty or to debating it and considering it in a meaningful way was the intersection of all of the other business that was being put before the Senate, much of it very partisan, and that it was very difficult. My colleague from Arizona was right in the middle of a sentence a while ago when he was interrupted by another colleague to say that we have some intervening business we have to do. That is the problem. If we are going to debate and consider the treaty and be able to do it in the thoughtful and focused way it really deserves, then we should not have all these other items come popping in and out of the Senate. We are on the treaty for 2 days and then going to be off of it for 2 days, back on it again for another day, and meanwhile now we are voting on this and that and the other thing. That is what I was contending would preclude us from ever really getting to the point where we had time to do the treaty and to do it right. I think my predictions were very correct.

Mr. President, I am glad to respond to that and summarize this again. Yes. Any lawyer--and we are both lawyers here--knows that if you have an ambiguity in a contract, you are asking for trouble. You are asking for litigation or dispute down the road.

It may not be all that important between two parties or two companies, but when you have two major countries such as Russia and the United States with a lot of tenuous relationships--there are a lot of things on which we agree and some on which we do not agree, very important matters that can arise. If you have a major dispute between the countries, you can affect international relationships not just between the two of us but affecting a whole lot of others in the world as well. You do not want to build in potential conflicts.

There is a double conflict here. The first conflict is between the United States and Russia. The Russians say: If you improve your missile defenses, we get to withdraw from the treaty.

The State Department signing statement says: Don't worry, we are only going to protect against regional or intermediate range threats. But the White House, at the same time, talks about having a letter from the President, or a statement from maybe the Secretary of Defense or somebody, that says: But we are, in fact, going to go forward and develop these kinds of missile defenses, which would, in fact, qualitatively improve our position vis-a-vis Russia.

So not only do we have a disagreement with Russia, we have a disagreement within our own government about our intentions. I do not think the Senate can ratify a treaty with all of this uncertainty out there. We do not know what this country intends to do. There are enough confusing signals that there is not only a potential for a dispute between Russia and the United States but between the Congress and the Obama administration.

Mr. KERRY addressed the Chair.

Mr. President, I object. What we were trying to do is simply indicate an order so people would know this evening roughly when they would be permitted to speak, what the order would be, how late we would go, and so on. It is my understanding that we will not be on the treaty tomorrow but, rather, that we will be on two other matters the leader has filed cloture on and that we would have some debate preceding the two cloture votes. Therefore, we would not be on the treaty tomorrow. When we go back on the treaty, obviously there may be something that needs to be set on the amendment before we vote.

I cannot agree with that. I simply don't know who else might want to speak to it. With the amount of people speaking to this tonight and the fact that presumably we will come back on this Sunday or Monday, I would not anticipate personally--though it is not my amendment--that there would be a tremendous amount of debate left and it would not be our intention to hold off a vote; however, there may be people who want to speak to it, and I may want to have something.

Mr. President, might I also say that Senator Thune would like to have 15 minutes tonight.

I think that is the best way. Then perhaps we can talk offline.

Actually, if I could correct it a little bit.

I was involved in the negotiations over the tax legislation.

And in an effort to prod the people in those negotiations to put their ideas on the table so we could complete work on the tax negotiations, I said: Given the schedule that the leader had announced--the desire to leave Washington this afternoon, December 17-- I felt they needed to follow--and I laid out a schedule, the Senator is right--by which we would complete work on the tax legislation and the funding of the government, so we could begin this treaty last Wednesday. And if we were able to begin the treaty last Wednesday, and we did not have any interruptions in the interim, then a period of about 9 days would have existed, even working through the weekend, and we could have completed it by today. By the way, when I said last Wednesday, obviously, I meant the Wednesday prior.

Madam President, the House finally concluded its work on the tax extensions and related activities last night. I think ours was a night or two prior to that.

Well, I am not going to take credit for that because I would get a lot of----

Madam President, I will totally deny that I had anything to do with it. But I was involved in the negotiations for the Republican Senate side.

Madam President, yes.

Madam President, yes, that is exactly correct. And we were working on that at the same time--well, actually that has been going on now for about 10 or 12 days.

Madam President, I have forgotten. I would have to tell my colleague, I think it is three. I am not sure. We are now on the sixth version of the DREAM Act.

Madam President, I think that is the schedule, that we would have a cloture vote on the DREAM Act tomorrow morning.

Madam President, yes, I have been consulting with our Members on the DREAM Act, on the Defense bill, as the Senator mentioned, on the tax legislation, on what we then called the Omnibus appropriations bill, which----

Madam President, yes. The majority leader--well, it was not defeated. The majority leader pulled it down in order to reach an agreement with the Republican side on a much slimmed down version, a continuing resolution.

Yes, that took a lot of my time, working on the Omnibus appropriations bill. As the Senator knows, when, 2 days ago, we began debate on the START treaty, there was an assumption that I would speak immediately--on the first evening, I said, actually, let's get some business done here first. We need to do the funding of the government. So my first comments were on the Omnibus appropriations bill.

Madam President, no. The House of Representatives, I understand, has gone home after adopting a very short-term, I think a 3-day continuing resolution to fund the government since its funding terminates at midnight tomorrow night. We will have to then take up either that--well, we will probably take that up, adopt that, I assume, I hope, by unanimous consent, and then work out the maybe 3-month continuing resolution that will have to be passed by both bodies before we go home.

If the Senator will yield briefly, I ask to speak for just 60 seconds. I want to make it clear that I don't think anybody on this side holds Senator Kerry accountable for the fact that this is a confusing and back-and-forth kind of debate between the START treaty and other issues on the floor.

Also, I started to say about 3 weeks ago that, knowing that other people would try to bring issues to the floor, and knowing that we had a lot of other business we had to conclude, I could see this situation developing where despite the best efforts of Senator Kerry and others, it would be very difficult to have the kind of debate we needed on the START treaty.

Unfortunately, my prediction has come true. It has been very difficult because of the intercession of all of these other issues. But Senator Kerry bears no responsibility. The decision to move forward is a joint decision by all of the people on the Democratic side. That, I think, was the critical decision that got us into this problem.

Madam President, I had hoped to be able to respond to some of the things the chairman of the committee said earlier. A lot of words have been spoken in between what he said and what I will say now. I think I have correct what his arguments are. If I don't, I am sure he will set me straight. Let me respond to some of the things Senator Kerry talked about.

One of the most significant is this. It is the question of whether the preamble is important. Is it binding. Is it significant. While on the one hand the argument is made that it is an insignificant instrument, it is not binding and it is a throwaway statement that is sometimes done for domestic consumption, it has also been portrayed as a treaty killer. Both of those things cannot be true. It cannot be insignificant but also be so important as to be a treaty killer. I suppose it is possible for one side to treat it as insignificant and the other side to treat it as very significant. Thus, insofar as the Russians are concerned, it is a treaty killer. That is obvious because it means something to the Russians. That is the point. We have to appreciate the fact that they have set this up so that the preamble, combined with their unilateral statement, represents the case that they make legally for withdrawal under article XIV, if we develop missile defenses that they believe qualitatively improve our situation vis-a- vis themselves.

That is the importance of it. It is important whether they are laying the predicate for withdrawal from the treaty. Think of it. You have two parties to a contract. There is a dispute about what a critical term in the contract means. One party says: It is not that big a deal. The other party says: Yes, it is. That enables me to vitiate the contract. That is a big deal, because it sets up a future conflict. That is precisely what the problem is in the preamble. So we can't say on the one hand it is insignificant and on the other hand it is a deal killer, a treaty killer.

Second, it is true that either party can withdraw, but only under certain circumstances. When Senator Kerry makes the argument that the Russian threat of withdrawal is not that important because obviously either party can withdraw, that is only true as far as it goes and misses the point. The Russians are setting up, in the instrument, in the preamble and in their unilateral signing statement that accompanied the signing of the treaty, the ground for withdrawal. What they have said is they believe that if we develop our missile defenses, as we have said, then that constitutes the extraordinary circumstances that would give them a right under article XIV to withdraw. So while it is true that either party can withdraw, the question is, is it a withdrawal that is important, that is significant, that we can't ignore, or is it something they will do no matter what and there is nothing we can do about it?

Let me tell you why this is important and go back to the START I treaty. What countries say about these treaties is very important. It sets the groundwork for their approach to foreign relations vis-a-vis each other and, frankly, the position they take. For years the Russians had tried--before them, the Soviets had tried--to get the United States to cut back on or eliminate our missile defense plans. This was the whole point of the famous Reykjavik moment when Ronald Reagan, as much as he would have liked to have rid both sides of their nuclear weapons or as many as possible, nevertheless when it came right down to it, didn't take the deal that Gorbachev offered him which was: You eliminate missile defense and we will eliminate our strategic offensive weapons. I will come back to that in a moment. But it makes the point that the Russians for a long time have been trying to get us to link missile defense and offensive capabilities.

When that occurred in the START I treaty, our negotiators pushed back very hard. Here is what the United States unilateral statement was in response to the Russian statement. And the reason I quote this is because it is diametrically opposed to the approach our negotiators took with respect to

this New START treaty. Here is the United States unilateral statement at that time:

While the United States cannot circumscribe the Soviet

right to withdraw from the START treaty if it believes its

supreme interests are jeopardized, the full exercise by the

United States of its legal rights under the ABM treaty--

The treaty that permitted us to have missile defense--

as we have discussed with the Soviet Union in the past, would

not constitute a basis for such withdrawal.

In other words, directly contradicting the Russian claim that they could withdraw on that basis.

Continuing the quotation:

The United States will be signing the START treaty and

submitting it to the U.S. Senate for advice and consent to

ratification with this view.

In addition, the provisions for withdrawal from the START

treaty based on supreme national interests clearly envision

that such withdrawal could only be justified by extraordinary

events that have jeopardized a party's supreme interest.

Soviet statements that a future hypothetical withdrawal from

the ABM Treaty could create such conditions are without

military or legal foundation.

In other words, the United States rejected the argument that the Russians were making, that the United States withdrawal from the ABM Treaty would constitute a legal right of withdrawal for the then-Soviet Union.

You can argue about the merits of that. But the point is, we did not want to leave unresponded to a view of the Russians that we thought was fallacious, that was antithetical to the interests of a good relationship between the two countries, or that could potentially impact our decision on whether to stay within the ABM Treaty. It was important then to push back. So why did not our negotiators in Geneva push back in this treaty when the Russians sought to do the same thing?

My colleague from Massachusetts said: Well, actually Secretary Rumsfeld and even President Bush at one point said we are going to talk to the Russians about our missile defense and strategic offensive weapons. That is true. However, the United States was never prepared to take a position that those two items should be linked in the treaty.

As Doug Feith, the former Under Secretary of Defense, who actually helped to negotiate the treaty of 2002 with the Russians, wrote in the Wall Street Journal recently that when his Russian counterpart said we need to have missile defense tied into this treaty, Doug Feith said no. And he said: Well, we have to have a treaty to establish the structural relationship between our two countries. Doug said: No, we don't. We have relations with 200 countries. We have no treaty like this to establish a structure for our relationships. Doug said: Look, we don't need a treaty with you to bring down our weapons. We are going to do it anyway. If you want a treaty to conform your withdrawal and ours, that is fine. But we are not going to concede missile defense to you. And the Russians finally backed off.

The point was, in these situations we did not allow the Russians to successfully make this linkage. But in this case, we not only did not push back but we issued our own unilateral statement that essentially confirmed that we were not going to push the issue with the Russians because our missile defenses would only be good against ``regional or limited threats'' was the language that was used.

This is a problem because while it is true that the resolution of ratification has some language relative to the establishment of our missile defenses--by the way, let me quote what was not in the language but was offered by Senator DeMint at the time. What Senator DeMint said was that:

Accordingly, the United States is and will remain committed

to reducing the vulnerability to attack by constructing a

layered missile defense system capable of countering missiles

of all ranges.

The administration was not agreeable to that. They did not want language to say we were committed to this. They insisted on saying instead that we were free to do it. That is part of the problem. We do not know what this administration's real commitment is to the development of such a system. What we do know is that we should not allow the Russians to believe they have a legal right to withdraw from the treaty based on our future development of missile defenses, because they might well threaten to do that. And if they do, it becomes a big deal whether the United States says: Fine, leave the treaty, because we are going to develop these missile defense instead or a President says: Well, I am afraid you are going to leave the treaty, so maybe I will pull my punches and we will not develop the missile defense. That is the problem here.

Condoleezza Rice, in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, on December 7, made precisely this point. Here is what she said. After saying on balance she would support the treaty, she said:

Still, there are legitimate concerns about New START that

must and can be addressed in the ratification process.

And here is the second point she makes:

The Senate must make absolutely clear that in ratifying

this treaty, the U.S. is not reeestablishing the Cold War

link between offensive forces and missile defenses. New

START's preamble is worrying in this regard, as it recognizes

the ``interrelationship'' of the two.

Further: Administration officials have testified there is no link and the treaty won't limit our missile defenses.

She says:

Congress should ensure that future Defense Department

budgets reflect this.

Continuing:

Moscow contends that only current U.S. missile defense

plans are acceptable under the treaty. But the U.S. must

remain fully free to explore and then deploy the best

defenses--not just those imagined today. That includes

pursuing both potential qualitative breakthroughs and

quantitative increases.

I have personally witnessed Moscow's tendency to interpret

every utterance as a binding commitment. The Russians need to

understand that the U.S. will use the full range of American

technology and talent to improve our ability to intercept and

destroy the ballistic missiles of hostile countries.

She is saying that the preamble is especially worrying in this regard and we need to do something about it. That is what the McCain-Barrasso amendment does. It removes that thorn, it removes that issue, that potential conflict between Russia and the United States if we do go forward with the missile defenses that most of us would hope we intend to do.

Two final points, I think.

Senator Kerry made the point that it is merely a statement of fact that there is a relationship between offense and defense, and in one sense it is true. It is a statement of fact there is a relationship between the two. The point, however, is in a diplomatic agreement here between two countries, it is not always appropriate to acknowledge a particular fact if the purpose of that by one of the parties is to build a foundation for later withdrawal from the pact.

We have never conceded in an offensive weapons treaty a relationship that could infer a quid pro quo between missile defense and strategic offensive weapons, and President Reagan explicitly rejected it at Reyjjavik.

My colleague points out that at least in his view one side should never have an advantage over the other or there is an arms race that will occur. I do not agree with that. I think we should have an advantage. I think we should have missile defense. That is the moral response. That is what Ronald Reagan believed.

To the extent the question is: Must the United States give up missile defense as a condition to reducing offensive weapons, President Reagan was willing to take a chance on a new arms race, knowing that the Soviets could not afford to do it. And they did not. He took the chance, and I think it worked out rather well.

So I think to the point of: What is the harm in recreating this relationship, that is the harm, and Condoleezza Rice has made it very clear that in our ratification process, we should eliminate that harm, specifically by pointing to the preamble, and that is what the McCain amendment would do.

A final point. I do not think this requires much elucidation. The question is, What do the Russian officials say? I do not think we need to spend a lot of time on arguments that they believe this would give them a right to withdraw from the treaty. But there was one comment made by my colleague that: Well, who are you going to believe, the Russians or the United States?

The point is, on Russian intentions and interpretations, I would take into

account what the Russians have said. And without going into a long, detailed explanation, here are a few headlines, and maybe quoting from one article. Headline--this is near the time of the signing of the treaty, right at about the time. This is April 6: ``Lavrov: Russia may pull out of nuke deal if U.S. expands missile defense.'' There are a lot of other headlines and articles that point out the same thing. Here is Bloomberg Business Week: Russia may exit accord if U.S. pursues missile plan. That is according to Defense Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Let me quote a couple things he said, and then I do not need to make this point further because I do not think it has been seriously questioned that the Russians have made it very clear of their intention that the preamble sets up the condition, along with their unilateral statement, for the extraordinary circumstances that would allow their withdrawal under article XIV. This is the article I will put in the Record. It is from foreignpolicy.com, and I will ask to put it in the Record. But I will quote from it here:

It appears that Russian Defense Minister Sergei Lavrov

isn't quite ready to pop the champagne on the new nuclear

arms reduction agreement due to be signed in Prague this

week.

Russia will have the right to exit the accord if ``the

U.S.'s build-up of its missile defense strategic potential in

numbers and quality begins to considerably affect the

efficiency of Russian strategic nuclear forces,'' Lavrov told

reporters in Moscow today.

Going on in the article:

The issue of missile defense was the major sticking point

in negotiations over the treaty, particularly after the

United States announced plans to build new facilities in

Bulgaria and Romania.

Recall that was after the withdrawal of the radar from the Czech Republic and the missiles from Poland.

Continuing on with the article:

As FP's Josh Rogin reported last month, a workaround

solution to the issue was reached, in which the issue of

missile defense is not mentioned in the body of the treaty

itself, but discussed in the preamble sections written by

each side. The Obama administration has been adamant that the

treaty does not limit the U.S. right to expand missile

defense, and will likely make that case to skeptical Senate

Republicans. Lavrov, apparently, didn't get the memo:

Russia insists that the agreement includes a link between

offensive and defensive systems.

``Linkage to missile defense is clearly spelled out in the

accord and is legally binding,'' Lavrov said today.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of this article be printed in the Record.

Sure.

Madam President, that is the point I am making, and in contrast to the START I negotiations, where when the Russians said essentially something very similar to this, we pushed back and said: No, you are wrong, that would not be an appropriate reason to withdraw from the treaty. This time we did not do that. We let it pass, therefore, I would suggest, tacitly accepting the legal position of the Russians.

Madam President, that is correct.

Madam President, that concludes the point I am making, and is well made by Senator Sessions right now. That problem can be cured by the amendment that would fix the preamble by eliminating the words that create this conflict. I think that is something we should do by adopting the McCain-Barrasso amendment.

Madam President, I say to my colleague, the answer is, yes and no.

The answer is that while they have the right to do anything--

Madam President, I say to Senator Kerry, you have asked me a serious question, which requires more than just a yes or no answer.

The answer is, under the terms of the treaty, they have a right to characterize something as an extraordinary event which qualifies under the terms of the contract between the two parties to withdraw. And it is also true that, technically speaking, that is not a decision which we can countermand in any way. In that sense, it is true that they can withdraw.

But it is also true that this treaty, like any other contract, sets up terms

of reference. One of the terms of reference is the supreme national interest clause or the extraordinary circumstance clause. We both agree that clause has to be satisfied in order for a party to be proper or to be--or to properly withdraw from the treaty.

When the START treaty--excuse me, if I could finish. When START was ratified, we pushed back against the Russians when they said: Well, this gives us a right to withdraw from the treaty. We said: No, it doesn't. We made it clear to them they shouldn't withdraw under that circumstance. Here, by being silent, in effect, on it, we are tacitly agreeing with their interpretation, and that is dangerous because I would assume we don't want them to withdraw from the treaty, but they have set up a circumstance which is virtually inevitable because we planned to do the very thing they say will give them the right to withdraw from the treaty.

Madam President, in a technical legal sense, I believe that is the way it is interpreted. I might also make another point, just to correct something--and we can have this debate later if you want to-- but it is not true that no changes qualitatively or quantitatively in U.S. missile defenses will occur until after the 10 years that this treaty will be enforced. In fact, one of the most critical questions is whether the GBI systems we have deployed in Alaska and California will be available to be deployed in Europe or on the East Coast or somewhere else in 2015 or whether that will be delayed until 2017. So, clearly, there are--and those are the systems that would be potentially effective against a Russian ICBM.

Madam President, the answer to the question is, if the Senate, which is supposed to provide its advice and consent--in other words, it is the other half of the equation to the Presidency, and if we are not to be a rubberstamp, and presumably we can take seriously our responsibility to make changes in the treaty or the preamble--if that is our judgment and if we do that, if we eliminate these words in the McCain-Barrasso amendment from the preamble, then the Russians would have to decide either to accept that change or they would negotiate something with the administration that would then be resubmitted, that is correct, and/or there also could be a side agreement that would be entered into.

Would my colleague yield just for one quick question?

You said, then, the treaty would have to go back to the Russians. Of course, the Russian Duma is poised to act on this treaty after the Senate does so. The treaty is going to go to the Russians, and unless my colleague is suggesting the Senate has no right to change anything in it, of course, if it is modified, it goes to the Duma and then the Duma decides do they want to accept that change or not.

Would you yield for one quick question?

If it is not binding, then why does my colleague assume the Duma would have such a hard time accepting the modest change we are proposing?

I am rather enjoying this colloquy, so maybe I could extend it just a tad longer. Of course, the United States is free--I mean we are not going to ever let another country say we are not free to do something that is in our national interest. But the point is, the administration was unwilling to say we are committed to doing this. I think that makes a very important point.

The whole point of what we are arguing is that the Russians would like to put whatever pressure they can on the United States not to deliver--excuse me--not to deploy missile defenses that could be effective against Russian strategic systems. That has been their goal for decades. I think we can all stipulate to that. They would like to bring whatever pressure they can bear against the United States to avoid us developing those kinds of systems.

Unfortunately, in the negotiation of this treaty, we have opened ourselves to that kind of pressure by, for the first time, not pushing back against the Russians when they tried to make their usual interrelationship between defense and offense and say that if we develop missile defenses effective against them, then that gives them the legal and binding right to withdraw from the treaty. We didn't push back on that.

Instead, our signing statement said: Don't worry. We are not going to develop that kind of system. We are only going to develop systems that deal with intermediate threats or regional threats. So even though the Secretary of Defense had announced a missile defense plan on the drawing board here that would go beyond that, A, we didn't push back. We agreed to the preamble language.

We didn't push back against the signing statement the Russians made. Recently, in the briefing in Lisbon, we seemed to confirm our unilateral statement that we were only dealing with regional or limited threats. Then you can throw in the fact that we pulled the proposed missile defense GBIs, ground-based missile interceptors, out of Poland, and the radars associated with that out of the Czech Republic.

All of that suggests the Obama administration is not as serious about missile defense as we would like them to be, and perhaps one of the reasons is because it will anger or upset Russia. So the more pressure Russia can put on the United States not to do it, the more likely the Obama administration is not to do it. The whole point is a matter of pressure--subtle pressure or bullying pressure, which the Russians are pretty good at too.

If this achievement of the START treaty is so important to President Obama--and I think it is--the question is whether he is willing to jeopardize or risk that treaty if the Russians came to him some time later and said: You are developing something on missile defense that bothers us, and if you do that, we are withdrawing. President Obama might say: Don't do that, we will back off.

The evidence suggests that is the approach this administration may be taking. It is worrisome, as Dr. Condoleezza Rice pointed out. That is why she suggested that we fix that problem in the preamble in the ratification process of the treaty.

Mr. President, that is a good question. I think the answer is, first of all, that I don't think at this moment in time he can clarify it in that regard because he can't predict what concerns the Russians will bring to him and what his response at that point will need to be. If, for example--

Let me finish my point. If we were developing a system which the Russians say will bother them because we could use that against them, and they want us to change it in some way, my best guess is that he will be inclined to change it, even though he wrote a letter to us saying: Rest assured I am committed to developing good, strong missile defense for the United States.

I think the Russians are trying to bully this administration, or future administrations, into a position where we will be less certain to do the kind of things that are just in our best interest because we will have to be concerned about the Russian response.

I am not questioning the President's sincerity or his honesty or his current intentions. But nobody can predict the future. President Obama is smart, but he can't predict out into the future the kinds of things that could be implicated as a result of the agreements that are reached.

To finish my point, the whole problem with this is that the Russians are attempting to create a ground for claiming the legal right, as both of us interpret the term in the treaty, to withdraw from the treaty. Why? For only one reason. It is not to create flexibility, as the Senator said. They have the flexibility. It is to create the pressure to apply on this President, or a future President, not to do what we may want to do because of the concern by the Russians as to how that will affect them.

I don't think one can deny the significance and importance of that kind of diplomatic pressure. When we are asking the Russians to help us with the Iranians or North Korea or some other situation, they can say: That's fine except you are trying to do something we don't like in missile defense and then the President doesn't want to have them withdraw from the treaty and would like their cooperation on something else. These things matter.

In the area of diplomacy, you cannot ignore words in a preamble, though it may not be legally binding. Even as my colleague says, they are so important they could be a treaty killer.

Incidentally, I would like to correct something else. I think I am right on this issue. If we modify the treaty in this regard, I think the question to the Duma is, Do you want to accept this? It is not that we have to go back to negotiations. As a practical matter, we might well do that in order to smooth the relationships. But I think the treaty is sent to the Duma with whatever understandings or amendments we attach to it.

Mr. President, do I have the time?

Let me jump in on a couple of points. First of all, it is in my opinion it is incorrect to suggest that the phased adaptive approach is superior to the ground-based or GBI approach. I know there are people in the military who came up here and testified that it was a good idea to do that. Secretary Gates himself said that. I believe, however, if one understood the debate fully, one would appreciate that this was also a political decision made by the President and influenced by other considerations.

This administration has never liked the GBI that the Bush administration developed. It is my opinion that the GBI is more effective than the phased adaptive approach, especially since the administration is not talking about deploying but merely having available the fourth stage. But GBI is a more effective system.

We could have that debate, and I am happy to have that at another time. All I was trying to suggest is that the decision to remove GBI from the plan for Poland and substitute this other approach that is available at a later time, and, in my view, less effective, and also not have the GBI as a contingent backup until 2017, rather than 2015, were mistakes on our part at least, and at worst were decisions made to placate the Russians. That would not be a good thing.

I am simply trying to illustrate the fact that some believe that already in an effort to try to placate the Russians--maybe that is not the right word--try to act in concert with their wishes--choose to characterize it however you wish--the United States has pulled its punches on missile defense. I don't want that to happen.

With this construct, I am afraid that is the kind of influence they would bring to bear. I will ask my colleague a question. Do I understand the Senator to say that if the United States, for example, attaches understandings and conditions to this treaty, if the Senate were to ratify it, and if we make a change in the preamble, that the treaty does not go to the Russian Duma with those conditions or understandings and the change in the preamble but, rather, has to go back to some negotiating process? I thought the process was that the Russian Duma could add its own conditions or understandings and could either accept or reject the treaty as it came to them from the Senate.

I appreciate that clarification. I hope my colleague is not suggesting that, under no circumstances, should the Senate ever change a treaty so that the other party to the treaty would have to, in effect--well, the Senate would never be able to change a treaty. Put it that way.

That is my point exactly. If it is no more than that, I cannot imagine that it would be a treaty killer for the Russians unless there was something else afoot. And that something else--they deem it very important. Why? This is the legal grounds for them to withdraw from the treaty. That is the point.

This is precisely what Lavrov, the Foreign Minister, said. Linkage to missile defense is clearly spelled out in the accord and is legally binding and they talked about their ability to withdraw under article XIV based upon the U.S. improvement of our missile defense qualitatively or quantitatively. That is why it is so important to the Russians.

I don't know if it is a treaty killer because I think there is so much else in this treaty the Russians want, they are not likely to walk away from this if that language is eliminated. But I do think it is important to them because they are trying--this is the first time they have been able to get their foot in the door and establish that linkage, even though in the preamble--not in the body, although they did put article V in there, which also confirms the linkage. It is so important to them that it may be a problem for ratification on their side because then they would not have established this binding legal right to withdraw from the treaty.

Again, as Senator Kerry has pointed out, either side can make up a reason to withdraw from the treaty. But it is difficult for either side not to have a pretext, a legal pretext, and that is what they are creating here. The legal pretext is the United States developing a missile defense system that goes beyond what the Russians think it should vis-a-vis their strategic offensive capability. That is the whole point, and that is the reason for the amendment.

I have taken the time here, so I will yield the floor to Senators Sessions and Kerry, if they want to continue.

Madam President, I join Senator McConnell in a tribute to my friend and colleague, Jim Bunning. Jim and I came into the House of Representatives at the same time as parts of the 100th class. I have enjoyed being with him as well in the Senate. Jim and Mary are counted as among the best friends my wife Carol and I have. I agree with Senator McConnell that while people may disagree with Jim Bunning, no one has ever doubted his courage, his sincerity, his love for this country, his desire to do what is right, and his commitment to all those efforts. So I will greatly miss Jim when he is no longer part of the Senate. I think it is probably time for Jim and Mary to have a little bit of time to spend with all those children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Obviously, we all wish them both well.

omnibus appropriations

Madam President, I will speak for a few moments about the matter Senator McConnell brought to our attention; namely, this almost 2,000- page Omnibus appropriations bill. I know the majority leader has turned to the START treaty, and I think it is fairly obvious why. The American people are focused like a laser beam on this spending bill. I can't turn on the TV without hearing comments by both the commentators as well as people in public life about what this spending bill will do for this country's future.

I think it is time we devote some attention to this spending bill, rather than put it under the table and talk about the START treaty instead, which, after all, we could accomplish at any time.

As the majority leader said, spending for the U.S. Government runs out at midnight Saturday night. I can hear the cries at that time: We have an emergency on our hands. You don't want to shut down the Federal Government, do you? We have to do something.

Well, the something is apparently this 2,000-page, over $1 trillion bill, which will not have had adequate time for debate or exposure to the American people. Apparently, under the schedule, as it now is, it would not even entitle us to try to amend it. Think about that for a moment. That which is most important to the American people and the subject of the message conveyed in this last election--to stop the wasteful Washington spending--we are not even going to be able to amend the $1 trillion-plus bill that has been laid before us.

I know--and I think most people in this body know--how important international relations and treaties are, including the START treaty. But I also agree with the colorful comment by James Carville, a former adviser to President Clinton, who has a way with words. He said the American people don't give a pig's patooty about the START treaty.

Obviously, those of us in the Senate do. We understand its importance. But at this moment, the most important thing on the minds of the American people is how we are going to fund the Federal Government without continuing to waste billions of dollars of their money. That is what we ought to be focusing on in the last few hours we have.

Let me address a little bit about what we have found so far is in this bill and why so many of us are so concerned about it. The first point I will make is, I don't think ever in the history of the modern Congress that Congress has failed or the Senate has failed to pass a single appropriations bill. The American people should understand that, ordinarily, Congress passes a budget and we each--both bodies--pass about 12, sometimes 13 bills, to fund the different agencies and departments and functions of the U.S. Government. We didn't do that this year. We didn't pass a single one. We didn't pass a budget. So now the emergency that occurs, because we will run out of funding on Saturday, obviously, is laid at the feet of the majority, which didn't do its work earlier in the year, and that forces us into the position of having to act in this emergency way.

As the Republican leader said, ironically, this is at the same time we were considering the health care legislation last year, the week before Christmas, in a situation in which Members have very little time and ability to change the legislation that is before us, a bill that will cost more than $1 trillion. Very few Members will have time to analyze it, let alone read it.

Funding of the government, of course, is one of the most important responsibilities that we as Senators have. But as I said, this bill is going to get short shrift on the floor because it appears we will not even have an opportunity to amend it, if the majority leader's schedule holds.

Let's talk about some of the specifics in it. As I said, it costs more than $1 trillion. There is nearly $18 billion more spending in this legislation than in the temporary continuing resolution that was enacted last September. In other words, at that time, we understood we needed to begin the process of funding the government, even though not a single appropriations bill had been passed. So we passed legislation that, over a 12-month period, was $18 billion less than the bill that comes before us now. I don't think this is responsible, and I think most Americans who have had to trim their budgets would agree it is not responsible.

The bill contains more than 6,700 earmarks. Think about that for a moment. There are only 535 Members of Congress. Most of us don't have earmarks in this bill. So at 6,700 earmarks, you are talking about some legislators in the House and Senate having numerous earmarks. The total is $8 billion worth of earmarks. There is a debate about whether earmarks are good or bad, and some who believe they are OK say it is not that much money. But $8 billion is a lot of money no matter who is doing the counting--even in the Federal Government. It includes things--and I don't like to make fun of these things because they all have some purpose--like $247,000 for virus-free wine grapes in Washington. I am sure it is important to have virus-free wine grapes, but the last time I checked, the people who grow grapes are doing fairly well financially and could probably afford, if all the wine growers pool their resources, to come up with $200,000 to try to make sure their grapes are free of virus.

There is a $100,000 appropriation for the Edgar Allan Poe Visitor Center in New York. Edgar Allan Poe is certainly an iconic American literary figure, but for the Federal Government--I mean the taxpayers in Arizona probably don't appreciate the need to pony up money for the Edgar Allan Poe Visitor Center in New York.

The omnibus bill contains upward of a $1 billion increase in spending for the vastly unpopular health care bill Americans said they didn't want and continue to strongly oppose. Here are a couple of the details on that. There is an allocation of $750 million for the Prevention and Public Health Fund slush fund for a variety of programs--not named; a $175.9 million adjustment in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services program management account to implement the massive Medicaid expansion, as well as cuts to Medicare Advantage--something my constituents strongly objected to; an $80.7 million adjustment for HHS program management, on and on.

There are millions included for implementation of the very controversial Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, including a Securities and Exchange Commission funding increase of $189 million. That is 17 percent more than last year; a Commodity Futures Trading Commission funding increase of $117.2 million or a 69-percent increase over last year's funding; Treasury gets increase of $32.35 million or a 10- percent increase. It goes on and on.

The omnibus also contains $790 million for an increase in education stimulus programs. A thorough examination of those programs reveals that, at least in some cases, they advance the cause of the teachers unions--at least in my view--more than the cause of educating American children.

Some claim that at least you can say this bill's top line--its gross amount of spending is consistent with the budget proposal advocated by Senators Sessions, McCaskill, and many of the rest of us, including myself. But that is not true, as it turns out. It excludes numerous parts, such as multiyear spending caps, enforcement mechanisms, and limitations on emergency spending designations--something I will talk about in a second. In addition, the majority is using a budgetary sleight of hand to ostensibly meet the spending caps for 2011. This is what I was going to mention. They do this by a trick of retroactively declaring spending in last year's supplemental appropriations bill for Agent Orange claims as an emergency. So that money is spent. It was last year's funding. Now we are going to call that money emergency funding. What is the effect? It doesn't count and reduces the baseline and, like magic, by treating it as an emergency--to the tune of almost $3.5 billion--they have been able to secure a lower CBO score on the bill and, therefore, not exceed the spending caps. Without the gimmick, they obviously would have exceeded the spending caps proposed in the Sessions-McCaskill legislation.

I will mention process briefly. This bill is being considered under a deeply flawed process, as the Republican leader said. Voters made a very clear statement, I think, last month. They do not like wasteful Washington spending. They want it to stop. They didn't like the health care bill. They do not want us--here, a week before Christmas--to rush very complex, very large bills through the Congress without time for their representatives to read them, to study them and have an opportunity, potentially, to amend them. But under the schedule laid out, as I said, an open amendment process for this bill would be impossible.

At the very least, one would think Republicans should be entitled to 1 or 2 amendments to each of the 12 appropriations bills that are included within

this giant Omnibus appropriations package. Under regular order, each of these bills would take at least several days of floor time and we would consider numerous amendments. That is not going to happen with this bill. Instead, we will do the equivalent of more than a month's work of floor time in a couple of days, with no amendments. And some wonder why Congress' approval rating has fallen to 13 percent. Someone said: Who is the 13 percent? And the answer was: Well, it is our staff and our families. Maybe.

Let me conclude here with a little bit about jobs and energy prices. This bill will raise energy prices in the United States and destroy energy jobs through and including some of the following provisions:

There is a ban on shallow water drilling. I thought the whole idea-- especially after the gulf, where we had deepwater drilling problems-- was to encourage drilling in shallow waters to make up for that other loss of production. The bill changes the law to triple the time for the Department of the Interior to approve exploration plans for offshore operators from 30 to 90 days. This provision could lead to huge financial penalties to the government, breach of contracts, and add further impediments to creating jobs and energy here at home.

The bill reduces the State's share of Federal onshore oil and gas production revenues to 48 percent, down from the 50-50 split required under current law, and it raises fees for onshore and offshore oil and gas production on Federal lands. These fees amount to a tax that will make domestic energy production more expensive to produce, especially for the small businesses that do so.

There is much more--much more the American people should know--but we are supposed to be talking about an arms control treaty with Russia instead. I want to remind everyone that we are in a lameduck Congress, and my view is that trying to enact such a huge and complex bill within the narrow postelection timeframe shows disrespect for the democratic process. For that reason and the others I have discussed, I urge my colleagues to oppose cloture on this bill and to pass a sensible continuing resolution of the kind the Republican leader has introduced.

I want to leave no doubt about this final point. Those who are watching this process carefully and who understand how the process works understand that the important vote here is on cloture. It is the first vote. It is, in effect, the vote to consider this omnibus bill. Our constituents will not be fooled by Senators who vote ``yes'' on cloture to go to this bill--ensuring it will be considered under this rushed process without amendment--but then who vote ``no'' on final passage, after it is too late to stop the flawed process and say, well, I voted ``no'' on the bill. Well, of course, they voted ``no'' on the bill, but then it was too late.

The key vote is on the cloture vote, whenever that might occur, and I am told it might occur at actually 12:01 on Sunday morning--in other words, one minute after midnight. Well, that would be very reminiscent of last year's consideration of the health care bill, where through all the procedural gimmickry this body did not distinguish itself in adopting legislation under a process the American people saw through, objected to, and continue to criticize the legislation adopted as a result of the process as well as its substance.

If we want to do the same thing with this legislation, then it will demonstrate in the very first act relating to spending after the election that this Senate did not get the message sent by the American people.

Madam President, I plan to speak for about an hour for the benefit of scheduling, although I will only scratch the surface of what I will have to say about this treaty.

Let me begin by talking about 14 or 15 specific things I intend to cover at some point when we have time during this debate and note that there will be amendments proposed that deal with many of the items I am going to be mentioning.

First, I think it is important for us to lay out what some of the concerns are.

This morning when I talked about the fact that the Senate is going to have to deal with the funding of the U.S. Government which expires on midnight on Saturday, I noted the fact that the process the majority leader has invoked, to dual-track or consider the START treaty along with the Omnibus appropriations bill, is not a process that allows adequate consideration of either, and the American people sent a signal in the last election that they didn't want us to continue this wasteful Washington spending spree we have been on. Yet the Omnibus appropriations bill, which I am not sure I could lift, will do exactly that.

We ought to be focused on a process by which that can actually be considered with amendments. Under the way the majority leader has outlined our schedule, that does not appear to be possible.

The first concern I have with respect to going to the START treaty at this time is that we are putting the cart before the horse. Our first job needs to be to ensure that the Federal Government doesn't run out of money at midnight on Saturday. Yet the majority leader has turned to the START treaty. Why? I think the obvious--at least one--answer is to divert attention from this big pile of spending that I am pointing to, 6,700 earmarks. If we are talking about the START treaty, we are not talking about the Omnibus appropriations bill. But the American people are talking about government spending. That is what we should be focusing our attention on.

The problem now is that we are on the START treaty, and those of us who want to talk about this and want to amend it and believe we will be denied the opportunity to do so will be accused of not wanting to talk about the START treaty because that is what the majority leader has put on the Senate floor. And he will say: Gee, you have had all this time to talk about it. Why aren't you talking about it? That is part of what is wrong with the process. That is one of the reasons I have been saying you cannot do all these things and do them right.

In addition, the majority leader said this morning we have other things he wants to consider before Christmas as well. There is no earthly way to do all this within the time we have.

Let me mention some of the concerns I will be discussing with respect to the START treaty. I think one thing you have to talk about, first of all, is whether we are going to have sufficient time in order to do what needs to be done to both amend the treaty as well as the resolution of ratification and debate some of the issues, including the issue that my colleague from Massachusetts was just talking about.

Secondly, what were the benefits of the treaty for the United States vis-a-vis Russia? What were the concessions we made to Russia? What do they get out of it? What do we get out of it? My own view is, they got virtually everything out of it, and I do not know what we got out of it, except for the President to say he made another arms control deal with Russia.

Third, where will this treaty leave our nuclear forces, our delivery vehicles, and our warheads in terms of the deterrent capability not only for the United States but the 31 allies who rely on the U.S. nuclear umbrella? We will have cut our forces to the bone. Yet, interestingly, Russia will not be forced to make any reductions at all in these delivery vehicles for the nuclear warheads.

Fourth--and there has been quite a bit of discussion in the media about my work on modernization--where does the administration's modernization plan end up relative to START? The point here is, if you are going to bring your nuclear warheads down to a bare minimum number or below that you

have to make darn sure every single one of them is safe, secure and reliable and they will do what they are supposed to do and everybody needs to know that. But all the experts agree the facilities we have for taking care of our warheads and maintaining them are inadequate for that purpose, and they have to be modernized.

Is the process and the amount of money that has been set aside for that adequate? I will discuss my views on that and the questions that remain about critical funding for the modernization of both our nuclear weapons and the complex necessary to sustain them.

Fifth is the administration's uncertain commitment to the nuclear triad. This I find troubling because while they have committed to a modernization program, they have not yet committed to a program for the modernization of the three legs of the nuclear triad: the delivery systems, the ICBM force, the bomber force, accompanied by cruise missiles and our submarine force. I will be discussing the areas in which I think the commitments in that regard are insufficient and dangerous.

Probably most interesting to a lot of people in this country, and certainly to a lot of our colleagues, is the question of what has occurred with respect to the relinking of strategic offense and defense capabilities. This is the missile defense concern. There is significantly divergent views between the United States and Russia on this question of what the treaty does or does not do with respect to missile defense. Both explicitly and impliedly, there are limitations on U.S. missile defense activities in the treaty.

On the one hand, the Department of Defense has said the United States has plans for developing and deploying missile defense systems that will have adequate capability against ICBMs coming, for example, from Iran. If they have capability against those missiles, they also have capability against Russian missiles.

On the other hand, the U.S. official policy statement that accompanied the treaty and subsequent briefings from the State Department assures the Russians that the United States will not deploy defenses that are capable of undermining the Russian deterrent. That is important because of the way the Russians interpret the preamble and other features of the treaty.

Misunderstanding and conflict between the parties is thus built into the treaty if the United States intends to deploy more capable missiles either to defend Europe or the United States, which it is our stated policy to do. So are we to believe the administration will ever put this treaty at risk over future missile defense plans? That is a subject we will be exploring in-depth.

Seventh, the Senate gave advice to the administration not to limit missile defense or conventional prompt global strike, which is a capability that would permit us to deliver over long ranges, intercontinental ranges, a warhead that is not a nuclear warhead, something which this administration and I think are very important for our future ability to deal with rogue states, for example. Nevertheless, contrary to Congress's instructions, the administration has subjected advanced U.S. conventional military capabilities to limitations in this treaty, and we will discuss that.

Eight is something else. There are people who say there is nothing that stands between us and a nuclear-free world. It is called zero nuclear, the President's stated goal of a world without nuclear weapons. Some say this treaty needs to be adopted, ratified in order to permit us then to take the next step, which is to achieve that great goal. I submit that goal is neither feasible nor desirable, and that to the extent this treaty is deemed as a stepping stone toward that, it is a bad step to take.

Moreover, it is an unwelcome distraction from addressing the true nuclear dangers the President has made very clear are his top priorities; that is, the dangers of proliferation and terrorism.

Ninth is a question about verification, something Senator Bond has talked a great deal about and I am going to be speaking some about because of issues that arose during my trip with Senator Feinstein to Geneva during the time our negotiators were working on this treaty with their Russian counterparts.

It is very clear that with lower force levels, we need better verification. But this New START treaty has substantially weaker verification provisions than its predecessor, START I. Of course, Russia has a history of cheating on every arms control treaty we have ever entered into with them, which amplifies the concern.

There are some comparisons, and I would suggest they are false comparisons, to the SORT treaty, which is the 2002 treaty. It is called the Moscow Treaty; that is, the treaty that deals with our strategic offensive weapons after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the determination by the United States and Russia both to simply bring down our nuclear forces. We did not need anymore the nuclear forces that existed during the Cold War.

There are some false comparisons there that I think are very important for us to talk about as it relates to this treaty before us.

I think we also need to talk about the New START and Russian reset. I will talk about that a little bit when I begin discussing the reasons for trying to act so quickly here. But I think it also requires some further discussion because, frankly, Russia is threatening a new arms race if the Senate does not ratify this treaty. Is that the reset the President is so fond of talking about, this new wonderful relationship with the Russian Federation?

Twelfth, I think we need to talk about tactical nuclear weapons. The treaty did not deal with tactical nuclear weapons, and respected Members of this body, including the Vice President of the United States, then a Senator, made clear that after the last treaty the next item on the agenda had to be to deal with tactical nuclear weapons. It should have been, but it was not done here.

Thirteenth--and this deals with some of the amendments that are going to be necessary--there is a Commission in here that somewhat like previous treaty commissions--it is called the Bilateral Consultative Commission--and the treaty delegates to this Commission the ability, even in secret, to modify terms of the treaty--a group of Russians and a group of U.S. negotiators. There is some reference in the committee's resolution of ratification, but, in my view, it is inadequate for the Senate to be able to react in time to notification by that Commission of things it is intending to do in time for the Senate to provide its advice and consent, if those are necessary.

Then, as I mentioned, it is also important for us to determine how this treaty is distracting attention from what the President has said, and I agree, is our top priority; that is, dealing with proliferation and terrorism. This treaty does not do anything to advance our goals in that respect, and I think it would be much better if we could have spent part of the last 2 years better focusing on the illegal nuclear weapons programs of Iran and North Korea and why that should be our top agenda item right now.

Those are some of the things I am going to be talking about. I will not have time to deal with all of them during this first hour. But let me at least briefly talk about the question of adequate time. I do not think Senators are quite aware of some of the procedures that exist with respect to treaty ratification. Because of precedent in the Senate, when cloture is filed, it will close off debate both on amendments to the treaty and the preamble, as well as amendments to the resolution of ratification.

I think it is important to note there are amendments that Members, at least on our side, have that go both to the treaty and preamble and also amendments that deal with the resolution of ratification. In fact, I think there are many more that deal with the latter subject. We are going to have to be able to deal with both of those subject matters. So when Members talk about filing cloture, I think it is important to realize that would cut off debate on every additional change, even if we have not been able to complete work on the amendments to the resolution of ratification.

Also, I think it should be clear that there have been numerous letters sent to our leadership in the Senate and to the committee leadership from Republican Members of the Foreign Relations Committee, other Republican Senators, the 10 Republican Senators-

elect, Representatives from the House Armed Services Committee, and others, indicating this is not the appropriate time or way to deal with this treaty.

Incidentally, I happened to be watching Chris Matthews the other night--a television program--and Lawrence Eagleburger, one of the people who support the treaty, was asked by Matthews what the fuss was about getting it done now and, among other things, this is what Lawrence Eagleburger, former Secretary of State, said:

They want to do it before these lame duckers are out there.

That's not the way to move on this issue.

I agree with that. There are a lot of serious things to consider, and the rush to do all the business this lameduck session has is not the best way to get that done.

The chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee yesterday expressed the view that we had plenty of time to do this, comparing the work we have here to the START I treaty. The START I treaty is the predecessor to this New START treaty, though there was the intervening 2002 Moscow Treaty I mentioned before. But just to make two quick points on this: When we dealt with START I, we did not have all the competing considerations, the dual tracking with an Omnibus appropriations bill and the votes we are going to have to take on that, as well as the other items the majority leader has mentioned. Secondly, if we are to talk about an analogous treaty, the START treaty was not considered by the Senate until September of 1992, and the analogy would be that this treaty before us now would be appropriate to bring to the Senate next May, May of 2011. That is how much time elapsed between the two.

I am not suggesting we need that much more time, but I am simply pointing out the fact that it is not analogous. Probably a better analogy would be the INF Treaty. That is a treaty that took the Senate 9 days of floor time. We had no intervening business of any kind. There were 20 votes on amendments and plenty of time to work out consideration of other amendments.

So the idea that, well, some treaties have not taken that long, therefore, why can't we do this one, is a specious argument, and I think when we see the serious issues that need to be considered, our colleagues will appreciate the need to take adequate time on this agreement.

One of the curious arguments is, we have to do this quickly because the verification provisions of the predecessor START I treaty have lapsed and, as a result, we have a situation that is untenable. As a matter of fact, Robert Gibbs, the Press Secretary, believing that the Senate yesterday was reading the treaty, which did not happen, nevertheless put out a statement, obviously prematurely, and one of the things he said was:

Every minute that the START Treaty is being read on the

Senate floor increases the time that we lack verification of

Russia's nuclear arsenal.

Well, apart from the fact that he was wrong about the reading of the treaty, he is also wrong about the urgency because of the lack of verification of the Russians. First of all, I am confused by the two main arguments to support the treaty.

No. 1, we have this wonderful relationship with the Russians that has been reset and we are cooperating on all of these things. By the way, we can't trust those guys so we quickly have to put these verification measures in place. There is something that doesn't quite connect there as far as I am concerned.

But I go back to why we don't have verification right now. This story reminds me a little bit about the trial of a fellow who killed both of his parents and then pled for mercy from the court because he was an orphan. This problem of verification was created by the administration. It has nothing to do with action by the Senate, and they have nothing but themselves to blame for whatever verification procedures are not in place.

How did that come about? Well, the START treaty had perfectly good verification provisions in it that could have been continued for another 5 years if the United States had taken the view with Russia that that is what we should do. But the administration said, no, we are going to deliver the START treaty on time so there won't be any hiatus there, so we don't need to continue the verification provisions of

I appreciate that there is no time limit on my speaking and I appreciate there is no time limit on my time, but I have an engagement at noon and, second, I did not want to be out here on the floor talking for too long.

I will be happy to respond. Part of the business of the Senate on the treaty is to expose its flaws and to have a robust debate about those flaws, which can provide the foundation for amendments which we intend to offer.

I was struck by the seriousness and importance, at least in my mind, of the two-page list of amendments my staff acquired from colleagues. As my colleague knows, we actually shared a list of 10 or 12 amendments that I had thought about, and actually some of my colleagues--in fact, we had a couple-of-hour conversation about that one morning to see if we could reach agreement on any of them, which we were not able to do. But there are some very serious amendments, most of which go to the resolution of ratification, and a few go to the treaty or the preamble itself.

I note that yesterday my colleague said--I think I am quoting him correctly--``Make no mistake, we will not allow an amendment to the treaty or the preamble.'' Maybe there are the votes to not allow that. But I do think it is important for us, in this discussion, before offering such an amendment, to appreciate why we believe such an amendment would be important.

As my colleague well knows, there is a great deal that can be said about this. I am trying to say it in as succinct a form as I can.

But there is a great deal of discussion that needs to occur for a predicate for the amendments we intend to offer.

I appreciate my colleague's comment. I note that I think the reason the Russians are going to MIRVing is--at least the primary reason is exactly as Senator Kerry has stated. They have financial limitations on what they can do here, but I don't think one can deny that the result of it is strategic instability compared to moving toward a single warhead missile, such as the United States has been doing and will continue to do.

What I wanted to do in this segment of my remarks before I conclude-- and I will advise my colleagues that the next thing I intend to be talking about is the administration's commitment to the nuclear triad, but I don't think I am going to have time to get to that. I would like to conclude now with some comments about modernization.

It has been well known that I have been involved in negotiations with the administration regarding modernization. My colleague and friend, Senator Kerry, has been very helpful, I might say, in occasionally restarting those conversations when they got bogged down a little bit and was helpful--and I specifically have complimented him before and will do it again--in ensuring that the President's increase in the budget for our nuclear modernization program that was in his budget this year will actually be carried out in the funding the Congress does. We had to do a continuing resolution back in September, and I think it was largely due to Senator Kerry's efforts that that funding was included.

I just note that we have had a lot of concern back and forth about whether there is a real commitment to get that done over the years. Obviously, both of us appreciate the fact that no one can guarantee anything, but there is a certain amount of good will and commitment involved here, and certainly the administration needs to be very actively involved in ensuring that the funding required for its modernization program actually comes to pass.

I note that the continuing resolution as passed by the House of Representatives unfortunately conditioned this funding Senator Kerry and I were responsible for--conditioned it on the ratification of the START treaty, saying: If you don't ratify the treaty, you are not going to get the money. Thankfully, a couple of administration officials relatively quickly pushed back on that and said: No, that is not right. The treaty stands on its own, and the modernization program stands on its own, and this funding is necessary.

That is the kind of pushback on what might otherwise be rather petty politics that is going to be required by all of us who understand that modernization is critical in the future.

With that belief predicate, let me state what the problem has been and generally how we went about trying to correct or solve the problem.

The United States, believe it or not--and this is the fault of Republican and Democratic administrations and Republican and Democratic Members of Congress--it is a negligence, I would say a gross negligence on all of our parts. I take some of the blame for not having yelled about this more than I have. But at the same time that every other nuclear power is modernizing its forces, both its facilities and its capability to maintain its weapons, its weapons, and, in the case of the Russians and the Chinese, their delivery systems as well--while every one of them has a capacity to do that, to actually produce a warhead to put back into production when one comes out of production, the United States does not. The country that literally invented these weapons with the Manhattan Project is still using Manhattan Project-- that is 1942, in case you have forgotten--era buildings to take care of these most sophisticated weapons. If you were to liken it to a car, it would be like a Ferrari race car or Formula 1

race car, highly technical--I don't think you would want to refurbish those in somebody's old backyard garage.

The bottom line is that these facilities have to be brought up to modern standards to be able to modernize our weapons over time. Why do the weapons have to be modernized? Generally speaking, these are weapons that were designed in the 1970s, built in the 1980s, and built to last 10 years. Do the math. We are still relying on those weapons.

What we found, even though we have cut way back on the funding for what we call surveillance--that is to say, taking a look at several of these weapons every year, taking the skin off, looking down inside, seeing what is rusty and what is loose and so on, to use an analogy to a car maybe--what we found is that there are significant issues with these weapons that need to be addressed if our commanders and labs are to continue to be able to secure them as safe, secure, and reliable, as they must.

So we need the facilities in which to bring these sophisticated weapons in, take them apart, make sure they are put back together properly with all the requisite either new parts or reused parts or whatever is necessary to continue to allow them to work and get them back into production.

The timeline on this is more than critical. Suffice it to say in this open session of Congress that we dare not waste any more time at all. I think that is one of the reasons why the President's advisers from the laboratories and the Department of Defense and Energy presented this to the President and his nuclear posture review. In the modernization plan he developed, there is a very firm commitment on his part to move forward with this, because no time can be wasted.

To give you one illustration, when we left one of the facilities we had examined--we have been to each of these facilities and we have talked to the people there, and we were given a little souvenir from one of them. It is encased in plastic, a little vacuum tube. It is a vacuum tube such as those that came out of our black-and-white TVs back in the 1960s, I guess. It is still being used in a component of one of our weapons, and they are replacing it with circuit boards, of course.

That is the kind of thing that needs to be modernized in these weapons. So what is it going to take to do it? Well, the Congress, understanding that we had to get about this, in the last Defense bill put in a requirement that the President prepare a plan. It is named after the section of the bill, which was 1251. That section of the bill now is the nomenclature for the plan, the 1251 plan for modernizing our forces.

This followed a speech Secretary Gates made. Let me quote from the speech and then get into a little bit of the detail here. He said:

To be blunt, there is absolutely no way we can maintain a

credible deterrent and reduce the number of weapons in our

stockpile without either resorting to testing our stockpile

or pursuing a modernization program.

That was pretty much the genesis, that and the so-called Perry- Schlesinger Commission, which ran the red flag up the flagpole to get this program moving. So in fiscal year 2010, the Obama administration devoted $6.4 billion to nuclear weapon activities, but it has acknowledged that that is a loss of purchasing power of about 20 percent, from 2005--this is by the administration's own calculations. So we knew from the very beginning there was not enough money in the plan to get the job done.

In December, a year ago, 41 Senators--this is before Scott Brown, I might add, joined us--wrote a letter to the President stating:

Funding for such a modernization program beginning in

earnest in your FY 11 budget is needed as the U.S. considers

the further nuclear weapon reductions proposed in the START

follow-on negotiations.

To make a long story short, the administration had a 10-year plan in place that was becoming pretty apparent would not be adequate. That 10- year plan called for about $7 billion a year over 10 years, to basically operate the facilities. I have said, it is like the money to keep the lights on, but not money for this new modernization of our nuclear warheads or most of it would not have gone to that.

They realized they needed about $10 billion, at least according to their initial calculations. They got about half of that from the Defense Department, the other half they figured they would get from savings from recalculating interest costs in the latter years of the budget. So they added a $10 billion slug onto the $70 billion that was already budgeted for general operation of the system, and said that is our $80 billion modernization program. But based upon work that had done by laboratories earlier, by other study groups and so on, a lot of experts agreed, including all of the former lab directors, that that slug of $10 billion would never be adequate for the costly items that needed to be performed over the next decade. Most of us estimated it to be about double that cost or about $20 billion. I think that is essentially where we are going to end up, by the way.

In any event, the two biggest drivers are two new buildings, facilities that have to be built, one for plutonium work at Los Alamos Lab in New Mexico, the other for uranium work at the so-called Y-12 plant at Oak Ridge, TN. Those two buildings alone could end up costing over $10 billion. As a result, as I said, we went to the administration and said, we appreciate this modernization plan, but you need to update the plan and incorporate a lot of new costs.

We showed them a lot of areas in which there were deficiencies, including deferred maintenance that had to be performed. We even pointed out there was a billion-dollar unfunded pension liability that would have to be dealt with in order for the scientists to continue to work. I will not go into the quotations here. Vice President Biden acknowledged the same thing in a statement he made. I appreciate the fact that, by the way, they complimented our work and our staff for pointing out a lot of these things, which were the bases then for the administration coming back and doing an update to the 1251 plan, which at least incorporated funding for some of the items we had talked about.

There has been some talk about an additional $4.1 billion, and I know Senator Kerry will confirm this. It grates on me, and I am sure it does on him as well, to hear people referring to this in negotiation terms: Well, they gave Kyl another $4.1 billion. That should be enough.

That is not the point here. This is an ongoing, evolving process. The administration has also identified about another $2 billion likely to have to be spent within 6 years, but they were only looking at a 5-year process, so that $4 billion pertains to 5 years. My guess is, there will be another $6 billion over the last 5 years, and we will ultimately look at about $20 billion, more or less.

The point is, I did not believe the administration had been sufficiently careful in defining the requirements and identifying the amount of money that would be needed. I have said to many people, including my colleague Senator Kerry, we better not underestimate this for the appropriations Members of Congress. We better let them know upfront, this is going to be pretty costly, and get that out on the table.

To their credit, the administration has now put out new figures. As I will discuss in more detail later, but to summarize here, while that is a big step forward and very welcome, and I will support it all, there are other things that need to be done. One of the biggest concerns I have is that it achieves this objective in part by simply extending the date to complete these two big facilities I mentioned by another 2 years. They would not be complete until 2023 for one and 2024 for the other one.

That has the advantage of getting them outside the 10-year budget window, so you do not count any new money, but it extends the time by which these facilities can be done. And every year we were told it is about a $200 million expense to keep the existing facilities operating.

So we are losing a lot of money every year that we do not get these two new buildings constructed so we can move into them and get the modernization done. That is the biggest concern I have. I will talk about some others later.

But let me conclude here with a couple of quotations that I think illustrate the importance of doing what we need to do here.

Tom D'Agostino, who is the Deputy NNSA Administrator said:

Our plans for investment in and modernization of the modern

security enterprise are essential, irrespective of whether or

not the START treaty is ratified.

He and I think all of us agree, it is even more important if we go down to the lower numbers in the START treaty. But this is important either way. I note that former Energy Secretary Spence Abraham wrote a column in Weekly Standard recently that made the same point, that regardless of what is done on the START treaty, this modernization needs to move forward.

I made the point earlier about how the House Democrats conditioned the funding on ratification of START. I hope in the comments that are made on the floor here, it may be the subject of an--in fact, it probably will be the subject of at least one amendment to the resolution of ratification. But this is a place where the debate we have, the comments we make, may be as important as an amendment, because it is a statement of our intention as Senators. I think you will find that republican Senators who support the START treaty, and I am sure Democratic Senators who support the START treaty, will all say, one of the things that has to happen is the modernization of our facilities, along the lines of this updated 1251 plan, and the statements that the administration, as well as we, have made.

I will yield.

Madam President, I appreciate my colleague's comments. Rather than read the remainder of this, I ask unanimous consent that at the conclusion of my remarks here there will be additional quotations on the need for modernization by former lab directors Dr. Miller, Secretary Schlesinger, and several others.

I would conclude by emphasizing what the lab directors also emphasized in this correspondence. ``As we emphasized in our testimonies, implementation of the future vision of the nuclear deterrent will require sustained attention and continued refinement.''

The outyears are very important. That is why the record we create in this debate is important to ensuring that those who come after us will appreciate our intentions as we move forward here that we never again take our eye off the ball and allow the deterioration in our nuclear forces to occur, as we have, so we can continue to support them as called for in this modernization plan. I will ask unanimous consent to have those printed in the Record at this point, and then make the remainder of the statement at another time when I have not taken up all of my colleagues' time.

Thank you, Mr. President. It is a delight to see you in the chair.

Mr. President, let me make a brief comment on the last comment from my colleague about the work schedule of the Senate because I have been one of those folks who have decried the fact that we are dual-tracking the START treaty and the Omnibus appropriations bill here with just a week left before Christmas.

I do think it is an imposition on our families and our staff that we need to be working during this period of time. I do not think there is anybody in this body who works any harder than I do. I do not claim to be the hardest working, but I am no stranger to hard work, and I am happy to be here right up to Christmas Eve if that is what it takes.

But my complaint is that this is a problem that has been brought on by the Democratic leadership. All year long, we had the opportunity to do a budget. Did we ever do a budget? No. All year long, we had the opportunity to pass appropriations bills. This is the first time in my memory that the Senate never passed a single appropriations bill--not one.

So now here we are, with a week to go before Christmas, trying to cram everything into the same short period of time. We have to pass a bill to fund the operations of government which will cease on Saturday at midnight. We could have done that in the last 300 days of this year, but, no, we wait until the very last minute. We wait until the last minute to do the tax legislation that just passed out of the Senate and the House is considering this afternoon. In addition to that, we are trying to consider the START treaty. That is the concern a lot of us have.

But let me return to where I was earlier today when I was talking about some of my concerns about the treaty, laying the predicate for some of the amendments we will have as soon as we are done with our comments, our opening statements about the treaty itself.

I had last talked about the modernization program, and Senator Kerry and I had a brief conversation about that, agreeing that this was a very important part of the ability of the United States to have a credible nuclear deterrent. We were talking about the nuclear weapons part of that.

There is a second part of our nuclear deterrent, and that is the delivery vehicles--the missiles, the submarines, the long-range bombers, the cruise missiles--those components of our so-called nuclear triad that enable us to effectively deliver the warheads in the event that should ever be required.

The problem with this part of the modernization package is that we do not have the degree of certainty that I think we need to have the assurance that moving forward with an even lower number of warheads is a safe thing to do. Specifically, we have asked the administration for but have not received assurances with respect to the long-range bomber, the ICBM, and the Minuteman III. Let me just mention those two things.

With regard to the long-range bomber, we have repeatedly asked: Will we have a nuclear capable long-range bomber? That is what the bomber leg of the triad is--a nuclear-capable bomber. Now, it could be a penetrating bomber, it could be a manned bomber, it could be a bomber that carries cruise missiles to get to the target, but it needs to be nuclear capable. We have no assurance. So while everybody in the administration continues to say: ``We believe in our nuclear triad, we must have a nuclear triad,'' we are not getting any satisfaction on the question, What about the bomber leg of the triad?

Our current long-range bomber cruise missiles are due to be retired in 2025. Will there be a follow-on? Again, no reassurance. No funding has been provided in the 1251 plan that I spoke of earlier for replacement of an ICBM Minuteman III.

There is some very troubling language in the 1251 update on a follow- on assessment study. I am going to quote what this assessment study will be predicated on. This is for the ICBM. It is a study that--and I am quoting--``will consider a range of deployment options, with the objective of defining a cost-effective approach for an ICBM follow-on that supports continued reductions in U.S. nuclear weapons while promoting stable deterrence.''

That supports continued reductions in the U.S. nuclear weapons. So the key criteria here is not to carry whatever weapons we think are necessary but, rather, an ICBM force that will be determined and sized in order to achieve those reductions. What I am wondering is whether that suggests that the administration might not maintain an ICBM capability so that it can pursue further reductions or that the ICBM follow-on system will be based on plans for reductions.

Let me just complete this thought, if I could.

The administration's arms control agenda--my belief--should not be the key factor in determining the level of our ICBM capability.

I will make a note here and allow my colleague to interrupt.

Mr. President, I will be happy to respond to that.

Let me respond first by quoting two key officials from the Obama administration: Secretary Gates and Under Secretary of Defense Jim Miller. This is what I gather their decision is going to be based on.

First, Secretary Gates:

There are placeholders for each of the modernization

programs because no decision has been made. They are

basically to be decided, and along the lines that Admiral

Mullen is just describing, those are decisions we are going

to have to make over the next few years in terms of we are

going to have to modernize these systems and we are going to

have to figure out what we can afford.

Deputy Under Secretary of Defense Jim Miller:

We think the current ICBMs are extremely stable and

stabilizing, particularly as we de-MIRV to one warhead each.

I would interject, remember, we are doing that while the Russians are MIRVing, which, of course, creates more instability under this treaty.

But to go on with the quotation:

But we will look at concepts that would make them even more

survivable over time, which would allow them to be part of a

reserve force.

My point in reading these two quotations is to suggest to my colleague that it is troubling that the administration is not willing to commit to making a decision, is not willing to commit to having a nuclear-capable bomber force, is not willing to say that the ICBM force will support the delivery of the warheads required for that leg of the triad but, rather, will be based on what we can afford and be based on our desire to continue to reduce U.S. nuclear weapons, and that perhaps we are developing them in order to be part of a reserve force.

All of this suggests that the one quotation that was read by my colleague is a nice statement but does not reflect the reality of what the administration is actually planning on.

Yes.

If I could just interrupt my colleague, who interrupted me.

A viable triad at a minimum, per se, has to include nuclear capability or it is not part of our nuclear triad, right? And what I am saying here is that the administration is not assuring us that the long-range bomber will be nuclear capable. So maybe we have a dyad now, not a triad.

Go ahead. I will yield to my colleague.

Let me answer a question with a question.

First of all, given the fact that I think we are taking 30-minute segments each and we are having a debate here, can we agree that we will debate until 7 o'clock, and you can have half the time and I will have half the time? Either that or I am going to have to quit yielding to make my points.

And I am happy to do it either way.

Let me respond to this question.

Mr. President, first of all, this is the kind of engagement we need on this treaty and on so many other issues in this body. Too many times it is a Senator coming down and giving a speech, and half of us or more are not listening. And this kind of colloquy can develop more useful material for our colleagues and for the record than anything else. So I am very happy to engage in it. I just want to make sure I do not run out of my time with my colleague's questions.

But here is how it relates, and here is the importance.

We are being told that even though the delivery systems--and remember, this treaty deals with warheads and delivery systems. Let's leave the warheads off to the side for a moment. The delivery systems-- which are the submarines with their missiles, the long-range bombers, with cruise missiles in some cases, and our ICBM force and the Russian counterparts--those delivery systems are constrained in this treaty. The numbers are brought down to 700 deployable systems. So the question we have asked, naturally enough is, Is that enough? Will that work to cover all of the targets we need to cover?

I talked this morning about--and the answer to that question depends in part on what our future plans are because--take the B-52. Most of the pilots who are flying B-52s--I think we are two generations beyond the time these B-52s were built. These are old, aging aircraft. And everybody realizes even the B-1s and to some extent the B-2s need to be replaced. So the decisions to do that need to be made very soon.

Whether 700 is a good number will depend on whether we have an adequate triad to deliver these weapons when the time comes. So naturally we ask the question, What is our triad going to look like? It is true that some of these systems--the new systems that replace what we currently have--will not be available until outside the 10-year limit of the treaty.

But it is also true that every one takes an inordinate amount of time. How do they take so much time? I don't know. It seems as though in World War II we had all kinds of weapons systems come together to be built and fight the war and it is over in 5 or 6 years, but nowadays it takes 5 or 6 years just to get something ready to go, and then it takes them that long to deploy. So these are long timeframes for development and deployment.

It is true the Navy has already made the basic decision for the submarine, but I haven't mentioned the Navy. That is not my concern. But my concern is the IBM force and the bomber force.

I will leave the point with this: What is troubling to me is that on the bomber force, our administration is unwilling to commit we will have a bomber triad nuclear capable. That is an important decision, because if we are talking about 700 delivery vehicles that will not include nuclear-capable bombers, I have a problem. The reason is, because when you get briefed on how we are going to deliver these weapons if, God forbid, they ever have to be delivered or how we are going to deal with a potential Russian breakout, for example, or how we are going to deal with a problem if, let's say, we have an issue with one of our submarine or ICBM components to the triad, if we don't have a bomb-carrying or cruise missile-carrying nuclear capability with our bombers, then it is quite obvious the viability of our triad is implicated.

So we have to know these things. It is not some esoteric question. We are talking about delivery systems being brought down to 700 and is that too low. It is not too low if we have a very viable triad, but it becomes too low if our triad is not viable.

In the time remaining, let me talk about missile defense. This is something a lot of my colleagues have talked about. It is kind of core to the concerns a lot of us have with the treaty and, frankly, my ultimate support or not will depend, to some extent, on how we resolve this issue, whether it is by amendment to the preamble or the treaty or the resolution of the ratification or a combination of things. But, clearly, this treaty implicates U.S. missile defense, and that is wrong.

One of the chief achievements of the Bush administration was to finally decouple missile defense and strategic offensive weapons and the treaties that deal with strategic offensive weapons. It was somewhat limited in the START treaty, but in the Moscow Treaty of 2002 we said: We are going to reduce our weapons. If the Russians want to do the same, that is fine with us. We don't need a treaty to deal with that. The Russians essentially said: We want a treaty, and we want you to limit your missile defenses. We said no, and they eventually relented and said OK.

I have spoken with Secretary Rice and Under Secretary Feith and other people in the administration who count it as one of their achievements, the fact that we finally decoupled those two issues. In this treaty, they are right back together again and in a way that is inimicable to other defenses by the United States. That is what I want to focus on. We don't think there should be any limitations on U.S. missile defense. Yet the New START treaty not only contains specific limitations, though we were told there wouldn't be any, but it also reestablishes this unwise linkage I talked about in the preamble.

Let me quote three things that Under Secretary Tauscher said as of March 29 of this year:

The treaty does nothing to constrain missile defense . . .

this treaty is about strategic weapons. There is no limit on

what the United States can do with its missile defense

systems.

The third quote:

There are no constraints to missile defense.

Those three statements are not true because it turns out there are limitations and constraints specifically in the treaty. Article V, section 3 specifically constrains a particular kind of missile defense, the United States using a strategic offensive silo, for example, to use for defense. We have done that before. Our current plans are not to do it again because it is expensive. We might not do it in the future. This administration says it doesn't want to, but it is certainly constraining. How can you say those three statements by Under Secretary Tauscher are true? They are false. The administration simply says: Well, yes, there are limits, but we don't intend to do that anyway, so it is kind of a theoretical limit.

Well, in the first place, why is there a limitation on any missile defense capability in this treaty? We thought this was about, as Secretary Tauscher said, strategic weapons. Well, it turns out the Russians, of course, want to make it also about missile defense. One way they make it about missile defense is by article V, section 3 or paragraph 3, specifically constraining a particular way we would develop missile defense.

That is what we object to, that linkage. Why is that important? Because the Russians have always wanted to limit U.S. missile defenses, and this now gets the foot in the door for them to argue that under the treaty, they would have a right to withdraw if we improve our missile defenses. That gets to the real issue, and that is the preamble to the treaty.

I wish to quote from Richard Perle and Ed Meese, both of whom served in the Reagan administration. Richard Perle was with President Reagan at Reykjavik, a seminal moment in arms control history and for the Reagan administration. It was a time when President Reagan decided missile defenses for the United States were so important that he would walk away from a major strategic offensive weapon proposal that had been made to him by President Gorbachev. Here is what they write:

With this unfortunate paragraph, New START returns to the

old Cold War `balance of terror' and assumes that attempts to

defend the U.S. and its allies with missile defenses against

strategic attack are threatening to Russia and thus

destabilizing. Limiting missile defenses to preserve U.S.

vulnerability to Russian strategic nuclear strikes (as

defined by the Russians) will result in less effective

defenses against any and all countries, including Iran and

North Korea.

That is the problem.

How does that problem arise? Because of the language in the preamble. This is the language followed by two signing statements from Russia and the United States that define the intentions of the two countries with respect to this issue of missile defense. Here is what the preamble states:

The current strategic defensive arms do not undermine the

viability and effectiveness of the strategic arms of the

parties.

That is what it says, in part.

Quote:

Current strategic defensive arms do not undermine the

viability and effectiveness of the strategic arms of the

parties.

``Current,'' that is new language. That was not in the START I treaty. So what they are doing is defining the current systems. Why is that important? Because later they talk about any additions that would qualitatively or quantitatively improve our system would allow the Russians to withdraw.

Here is what--well, let me just make one point before I quote that. The administration says the preamble is not important because you can always walk away from a treaty, and even though the Russians say this preamble language gives them the right to walk away from the treaty, they can do it anyway, so what is the big deal?

Well, you can't just do it on a whim. We agree that if there is a matter that is so important to either country that it constitutes an exceptional circumstance referred to in article XIV which is the withdraw clause, then a party could withdraw. So, yes, it is true, that either party can define anything as an exceptional circumstance and therefore withdraw, but that is bad faith and it clearly is something that would be very difficult for a country to do, unless a country had built into the treaty the very excuse that they are talking about as grounds for leaving the treaty. What would that extraordinary event be? Well, it would be the improvement of U.S. missile defense systems.

Here is what Foreign Minister Lavrov said on March 28:

[T]he treaty and all obligations it contains are valid only

within the context of the levels which are now present in the

sphere of strategic defensive systems.

That is their position. That is their legal position. That is what they mean by ``current'' in the preamble. The reason that legal opinion is important is because the United States does intend--if you believe Secretary Gates and I certainly do--does intend to develop missile defense capabilities that could qualitatively advance our protection against a missile coming from Russia. It is not necessarily designed for that purpose. It may be designed to thwart an ICBM from Iran or from North Korea, but it has that capability and the Russians can easily define it as such.

Here is the Russian legal opinion:

The treaty between the Russian Federation and the United

States of America on the reduction and limitation of

strategic offensive arms signed in Prague on April 8, 2010,

can operate and be viable only if the United States of

America refrains from developing its missile defense

capabilities, quantitatively or qualitatively.

Well, we will develop our missile defense capabilities quantitatively and certainly qualitatively. That is what the phased adaptive approach Secretary Gates has announced is all about: a qualitative improvement of our missile defense capabilities. So how would the Russians treat that? Their statement, their signing statement, signed at the time that the treaty was signed, says the exceptional circumstances referred to in article XIV, the withdrawal clause of the treaty, include increasing the capabilities of the U.S. missile defense system in such a way that threatens the potential of the strategic nuclear forces of the Russian Federation.

That is why this preamble is so important. They treat it as the legal basis for their withdrawal if we improve our missile defenses qualitatively, which we most certainly will, and potentially quantitatively.

They have already built this into the record. From my point of view and a lot of my colleagues, this can only be read as an attempt to exert political pressure on the United States to forestall continued development and deployment of our missile defenses, and there is evidence it has already worked. First of all, we have pulled back from the deployment of the ground-based interceptor system that the Bush administration had developed and was prepared to deploy in Poland with the radars associated in Czechoslovakia, and we have also said now that with respect to our NATO deployment of the so-called phased adaptive approach, the first three phases will be deployed, but the fourth phase, the one that is most effective against an ICBM coming from long range, which could include a country such as Russia, is available--not deployed but available--by 2020.

Instead of having a firm rebuttal in response to what the Russians said in the preamble and in their signing statement accompanying the signing of the treaty, what was our response? It was not a firm rebuttal. We didn't say: No, that is not correct. That is not our understanding. That is not what we did, even though we had done that, by the way, with the START treaty. We pushed back very firmly on the Russians' signing statement. But instead, the State Department response to the Russian unilateral statement is as follows:

The United States of America takes note of the statement on

missile defense by the Russian Federation. Defense. The

United States missile defense systems are not intended to

affect the strategic balance with Russia. The United States

missile defense systems would be employed to defend the

United States against limited missile launches, and to defend

its deployed forces, allies and partners against regional

threats. The United States intends to continue improving and

deploying its missile defense systems in order to defend

itself against limited attack and as part of our

collaborative

approach to strengthening stability in key regions.

In other words, don't worry, Russia. We are not going to develop missile defenses that could thwart your strategic offensive capabilities. We are only developing missile defenses that would be effective against regional threats, against limited missile launches, against limited attack.

So it appears to me that while the Russians have built into this treaty and into the preamble the perfect argument for withdrawal and they have directly said it constitutes exceptional circumstances under their interpretation of article XIV, the United States has not responded with a negative but rather with a statement that says: Don't worry.

Might I inquire, is the original 30 minutes which this side was allotted consumed?

Let me do this, since I do see Senator Casey on the floor, and Senator Kerry may have something more to say. Let me try to sum up what I am saying about missile defense, although there is much more to talk about, and this will very definitely be the subject of maybe even the first amendment that is offered on our side because there has been such a cavalier attitude about this on the other side: We don't need any amendments. We don't need any missile defenses. This is serious business. You would never enter into a contract to buy a car or a house, for example, with a degree of uncertainty or disagreement between the parties as to what the terms mean. Think about this treaty. This is a very serious proposition that starts with a fundamental disagreement between the parties and clearly could create enormous complications in our relationships in the future.

If I could just finish this point. Instead of creating a more stable relationship, a relationship built on the reset, a relationship which is built on very clear, transparent views of things on how we are moving forward together, built into this treaty is an inherent conflict that can cause nothing but trouble in the future unless the United States says: Fine. We will not develop any missile defenses that could conceivably be effective against Russia, which then means that they couldn't be effective against an ICBM from Iran or an ICBM from Korea.

This is the dilemma presented by this treaty and its preamble terms. This is what causes us such great concern. I am happy at this point to yield to my colleague, and if he would like to engage in a colloquy, that would be fine.

I have a brief response. There are concerns by a lot of colleagues on my side of the aisle, so it is not just a matter of satisfying John Kyl. Let's understand that. I would be happy to take yes for an answer--if that were the answer.

My colleague confuses two things. First, the preamble has been agreed to by both parties. This is not just a Russian statement of intent. The preamble is part of the treaty that we have agreed to. For the first time, it connects missile defense with strategic offensive limitations by saying the current strategic defensive arms do not undermine the viability and effectiveness of the strategic arms of the parties.

Secondly, my colleague says it is a technical argument that the treaty otherwise constrains missile defenses. It is more than a technical argument. It specifically does--and there was no place in this treaty for any limitation on missile defenses or how important or unimportant they are. Why would the Russians insist on putting that in there except to establish the beachhead? The point is that, yes, a strategic arms control treaty will deal with missile defense. It does, and the preamble does too by linking the two.

Why is this important? There is not a technical statement in the treaty that says the United States will limit its missile defenses. That is true. But because the Russians interpret the extraordinary events--the technical term under article IV that would permit a country to withdraw--as specifically including the U.S. development of missile defenses that are qualitatively better than we have now, better than current policy, because that is their interpretation, whether or not we agree with that interpretation, we have created a dichotomy between the two parties to a very important contract. They interpret it one way and we interpret it another. What will the inevitable result be? Disagreement between our countries about a fundamental point, one which, according to the Russians, will require them to engage in a new round of the arms race that will begin, according to President Medvedev.

They are saying: If you don't agree with this, under the circumstances we are going to engage in another round of strategic offense weapon building.

What we on our side are concerned about is that President Obama, who has already backed off the deployment of the GBI system, which was the most robust American missile defense system, and has qualified, it appears, the deployment of the fourth phase of the phased adaptive approach, and who other people in the administration speak in terms of that--I am talking about the State Department and our signing statement--they suggest we would only develop a missile defense against a limited or regional threat.

Those are reasons to believe this position of Russia is already working to cause the United States to back away from what would have otherwise been a much more robust development of missile defenses to protect the people of the United States.

So that is the argument we are making. We can say that, technically, anybody can withdraw from the treaty all they want to and the preamble doesn't mean anything or so on. Well, it appears to have already had a significant meaning within this administration is the point we are trying to make.