Mr. President, when we called this bill up, we called up the House version. I ask unanimous consent that all after the enacting clause be stricken, the text of Calendar No. 213, S. 1424, the Senate committee-reported bill, be inserted in…
Mr. President, when we called this bill up, we called up the House version. I ask unanimous consent that all after the enacting clause be stricken, the text of Calendar No. 213, S. 1424, the Senate committee-reported bill, be inserted in lieu thereof; the bill, as amended, be considered as original text for the purpose of further amendments; provided that no points of order be waived by reason of this agreement.
Mr. President, as I understand it, the energy and water appropriations bill, as reported out unanimously by the subcommittee and Committee on Appropriations, is pending. One amendment--there may be others--we are awaiting is a Feinstein, et al., amendment to be offered and debated. I don't believe it serves any purpose for the Senator from New Mexico to discuss the issue until the amendment is offered. As a consequence, I am going to yield the floor and put in a quorum call, with the full understanding that Senator Feinstein intends to offer shortly her amendment. And from what I understand, an hour later, at about 3:30, the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts, Mr. Kennedy, is going to speak in support of the Feinstein amendment. In between those, I will speak, and there may very
well--either this afternoon before we recess and go into morning business, or early in the morning--be other Senators on either side who might want to speak to this issue. I am not totally aware of that.
It is not the intention of the Senator from New Mexico that we go on indefinitely. This is a well-known amendment. We voted on something like it already once. But this is different in some respects. It is appropriations. So in that context, it is actual money instead of authorizing.
Having said that, everyone should now know the bill that is pending is the Senate-reported energy and water bill. All of you who had water projects that you asked about, you can have your staff look to see if you were successful. We have attempted to advise most of you. I can say that to the extent we have had to be arbitrary because of a shortage of money, it has principally been when we have somebody asking for a new authorization. We haven't been able to do that in this bill. With respect to the Corps of Engineers, the Bureau of Reclamation, we haven't started any new programs. So if you asked us for that, you may say: Gee, they didn't treat me right. It may be that you have to come and ask, and that is the reason. It is not a new authorization.
We have tried our very best to do what we could with a shortage of money in the Corps, which I have already explained to the Senate. I explain it every year. We could pull the record player out and repeat it because every year Presidents do the same thing. They leave out projects, and they don't put in enough money. And then we come along and we have the most desired projects of all because if you are chairman Senators stuff your pockets with requests. They come in saying: Please help with this. It is a little project in my State. But it seems as though we are the only ones who understand how important these little projects are to Senators. It doesn't seem as though the administration--this one, other ones--thinks it is very important.
They are not all in here. But a few more than the President was able to put in are here in this bill. So please look. And if you have any complaints, bring them to us. We will do our best. We will even explain to you, if we turned you down, that it is a new project. We will explain what that means and why we have no alternative. When we can't pay for the ones we have, we can't be adding any new ones.
I note the presence of the Senator from California. Whether she desires to offer the amendment is up to her. I yield the floor at this time.
Mr. President, can we get the yeas and nays?
Mr. President, I don't know how much time I will take but obviously some amount of time. There are a number of other Senators on our side who wish to speak but I want to speak to this amendment.
First, fellow Americans and friends here, there are a lot of issues that the wonderful Senator from California talked about that deserve some real clarification. There is an inference that we are not interested in nonproliferation and that we are going in the wrong direction. Everybody should know that the United States of America not too many years ago had 40,000 nuclear weapons. We are moving rapidly toward 5,000--40,000 moving rapidly toward 5,000. In fact, both the United States and the former Soviet Union are having difficulty getting rid of what comes out of these nuclear weapons because they are moving so fast. That which is coming out of them is creating proliferation itself because we are moving so rapidly. We do not know what to do with the plutonium that comes out of them. The Russians don't know where to put it. But in terms of getting rid of nuclear weapons, the United States is on a path from 40,000--and I can't give you the classified number but I can tell you it is 5,000 or less.
That is point No. 1.
Point No. 2: The pit--the plural ``pits'' is not a very nice sounding word--is an absolutely necessary incremental part of a nuclear weapon. Without a pit, there is no nuclear weapon--none.
The United States is not engaged in producing new weapons but, rather, is seeing to it that we make sure what we have will work. That is called science-based stockpile stewardship, which means about 6 or 8 years ago we voted to have no more nuclear underground testing. There is nothing in this amendment that says we are going to break that. If it was, we would be up here arguing that we are here to break the agreement that the United States has. The Senate voted, then the House followed, and the President signed. It was Mark Hatfield who offered the amendment. It passed here as a consequence.
We are not involved in underground testing. I repeat: We are not involved.
This amendment would strike a provision--let us take them one at a time--that says over there in Nevada there is a great operation wherein we used to do underground testing. It is huge. It is complex in nature. We said in the Senate when we put our blood on the line, no more testing. That is a vote far from unanimous. We said, we will always keep that Nevada desert test site ready for tests.
Did we say that because we planned a new generation of nuclear weapons? Of
course not. We said that because there is a huge risk to America in the science-based stockpile stewardship as a method of assuring the validity of our nuclear weapons. There are scientists in America who at their own expense would come and tell us it will not work. In a few years, you will not know whether your weapons will work or not. That is why we said, keep Nevada ready.
All this amendment says--and it is high time; we should have done it 4 or 5 years ago--spend a little bit of money, less than $20 million, and begin to make the Nevada Test Site ready so instead of taking 3 years to get it ready for a test, we get it ready in 18 months. That is all it says.
Incidentally, Senator Feinstein, we are both worried about our grandchildren. We probably cannot decide who loves our grandchildren more. At this time in my life, I have twice as many plus three, so if you are worried about your five, I am worried about my 13. But I am clearly not worried that this amendment, the language you are striking, this funding, has any chance of harming my grandchildren. That is an absolute myth.
Does making the Nevada Test Site capable of conducting an underground test ready in 18 months endanger the children of America? Fellow Senators, there is a valid argument it helps the future of our children and America's future to have it ready on 18 months' notice instead of 3 years. That part does not belong in this amendment and should not be stricken. It should be in this bill. We should make Nevada modern so if we need it, we use it, not 3 years after we decide we need a test because we have some idea there is something amiss in some of our weapons which are 35, 40, and 45 years old. Our nuclear weapons are that old. And we are saying, they will work. We used to test them. But now we have these great scientists and the laboratories--two of them in my State--and they are doing it by assimilation. And they are saying, we think they will work.
Then the Senator talks about the planning or a plant to manufacture pits for the nuclear weapons. Fellow Senators, we need to manufacture pits for the weapons we have, not the weapons someone is dreaming we will build. There is nothing in this law that says we will build one additional nuclear weapon. Does the Senator know that every country which has nuclear weapons has spare pits, extra pits, to make sure they will never run short--except one country. This country. We have no spare pits. I don't want to infer it is the end of the world. It is just a fact. For those who think we could make a new nuclear weapon and break all our agreements, they have to know right now we do not have a spare pit to put in a nuclear weapon. And the world knows it.
Senator Domenici is not giving any secrets to anyone. It is a truism. For 8 years we have been fooling around with funding at Los Alamos to see if we can make a pit. I regret to say it has been one terribly tough job. I cannot state today--and I know as much as anyone-- whether they have produced one that meets all the test requirements. Frankly, it is the only place in America that if tomorrow we said, Get a pit, we need to replace one, one of our nukes needs a new pit, it is the only place to look to. What in the world is wrong with an administration that says the time has come to build a manufacturing center for pits?
The good Senator from California ties it into the fact that she thinks it is for a new generation of nuclear weapons. Where is the authority to build a nuclear weapon? Read this law we are funding and tell me where there is authority to build a new nuclear weapon. This Senate would have to stand up and vote to build a new nuclear weapon. Believe you me, it would be a bigger day of debate than this particular afternoon in the Senate. It would be a red-letter day when the United States sends to the Senate floor a proposal to build more nuclear weapons. And it is not this day. That is not what we are doing. There is not one single word that says we are going to build a new nuclear weapon.
So two proposals the Senator is talking about in this language, the fear for the future and what we are going to do to the world: In building pits for the future we are going to do nothing to the world. They are already wondering why we have not built them. That is what others are wondering. They are asking, What is the matter with America?
We want to begin a plan. I am not sure when they bring the plans that I am going to agree to as big a plant as they want. Maybe we will build a little plant. But this says, begin the planning and designing. It provides not one penny for construction, nor does it decide where this place to build pits will be. Do they need it now? It could wait. But we have been waiting pretty long--for 9 years, maybe 10. The planners ask what is going on, why can't we build one? We keep asking scientists to build it at Los Alamos, but that is not a production center. They do not have the facilities. They have built the facilities and I have seen them. It is more like a science lab than a manufacturing plant. One could say, let them keep doing it that way. I don't like it and I don't think anyone planning for the future thinks it is a very good idea to plan for our future in terms of replacements at Los Alamos.
That leaves the part of this amendment wherein we agreed with the Senate. We already voted in this Senate on these issues. We voted affirmatively in the Senate on these issues in the armed services authorizing bill. We already voted on every one of these issues. The nuclear posture review suggested the credibility of our nuclear deterrence is dependent upon flexibility and adaptive production complexes, ones that would be able to fix safety or performance problems on aging stockpiles as they arise. The Senate bill does that.
The Nuclear Posture Review suggests we should keep our nuclear scientists engaged and thinking about the nuclear stockpile of the future and what it should look like. Might I repeat, the Nuclear Posture Review suggests we should keep our nuclear scientists--the greatest in the world, excited about their work, living at one of three great laboratories--engaged and thinking about what the nuclear stockpile of the future should look like.
It does not commit us to build any new weapons. And there is no money in this bill to build new weapons. Let me repeat, there is no money in this bill to build new weapons. It suggests that our scientists should remain flexible, that we should not have to have them worried all the time whether thinking about certain aspects of a nuclear weapon of the future is a violation of the law or not.
They should be permitted to think about--based upon what we have learned, what we know about both our friends and our enemies and war so far, and what people are creating in the world--they should be able to think and design and posture, but not build a single new weapon, whether it be one the Senator from California talks about in terms of tactical weapons--I do not even know where that comes into this thinking. There is no authority for tactical weapons in this bill, in this money, as the Senator in the chair knows. There was nothing in the authorizing committee that said that.
There is much more to say, but I believe I have done my best, in a few moments, to dispose of the idea that America is on a path that will cause the world to start rebuilding new nuclear bombs in anyone's stockpile to react to our improving the Nevada weapons site. The idea that any country is going to react by saying, ``We are going to go do something now and build more bombs because they are getting Nevada ready,'' is an absurdity. It has no logic to it.
We should never have let it go to 3 years. That is what it takes to get ready to test one there--not test a new one, to test one we have, to test one if science-based stockpile stewardship fails.
I repeat, the other part of it is we do not want to start planning a design for a manufacturing center for pits in an inventory which would then make America have an inventory of spare parts like other countries do instead of being the only one without them.
Now, if you finish those two, and then you argue the one that wants to give these engineers and scientists authority to think about what weapons might look like in the future, you have the whole substance-- the cake, the strawberries. Everything that goes with it in this amendment is encapsulated in those three ideas.
Now, I have argued with many Senators. I have been in the Chamber on
many issues. I have respect for some, great respect for others. The Senator from California is among those for whom I have great respect. But in this instance, the conclusions that have been drawn with reference to what is in this bill, and what was proposed by the review people of the United States who review our nuclear posture, are just not so, plain and simple.
I think the Senate should not follow the House. The House, for some reason, decided to spend this money on water projects. That is fine.
I say to the Senator, we would like $40 million more for water projects. But this Senator is not going to prevail and preside over a committee, because we are short of water money, that looks at these projects in the wrong way and then, in the end, says: Well, we will have $21 or $24 million more for you House Members' water projects. Not this Senator. We will put it right here. This is what this money ought to be for.
We are going to vote on this bill. We are going to vote sooner rather than later. Hopefully, Senators will see it like they saw it before. A substantial majority voted yea on the authorizing bill to do this. We came along in an appropriations bill and said: The Senate told us to do this.
We voted for it. So we have done what the Senate asked us to do.
I hope the Senate will say: Having done what we asked you to do, we will leave the money that you put in to do what we asked you to do. We will leave it right there. We won't put it on the debt or put it in water projects. We will put it right where you asked us to put it.
With that, I yield the floor.
I ask the Senator, what was the question? I am sorry, I did not hear it.
OK.
OK.
Mr. President, reserving the right to object, let me just talk with the Senator for a moment.
That means I have a chance for rebuttal?
Also, I say to the Senator, I wanted to tell you--I am not sure if you knew--the yeas and nays have been ordered on this amendment, and I assume you are going to debate an issue unrelated to this. How long might we expect you to speak?
An hour?
I have no objection.
Madam President, Senator Kennedy is still in the Chamber, and he asked a question of the distinguished Senator from California about the safety of our nuclear weapons.
Senator Kennedy, once a year, each of three civilian men--it happens in this case they are men. I don't think there has been a woman in charge of either of the three nuclear laboratories since their inception. But, once a year, three civilians certify to the President of the United States that, to the best of their knowledge, the nuclear stockpile is intact, safe, and reliable.
That has been going on for well over 60 years. But only 8 years ago, or 9, we changed the way those men concluded the weapons were safe and reliable and ready. Properly or improperly, we said no more underground testing. Prior to that, every time a certification was
made to the President, it was predicated upon the single best way to determine the validity of a weapon, and that was to test it.
Now we have said let us do it another way. Let us send a signal to the world we don't want to test underground. This amendment is relevant, which I will tell you about in a moment.
We said to the scientists, How much money do you need to get the best equipment, including new equipment, to determine the validity of the weapons without testing? That is called science-based stockpile stewardship. There are many who do not think it will work, that we will have to return someday not for a new stockpile, but to answer that question we might have to return to testing.
I know the Senator from Massachusetts has studied these issues, and he is a very involved Senator. But I spent a huge portion of my life learning this. We are going through the throes of the most incredible kind of research just to determine there is nothing wrong with the innards of a 40-year-old bomb, or 30-year-old bomb as we reduce from 40,000 to 5,000, or less, which is where we are now and heading down.
Yes. The answer is if you follow that sequence, those men not too long ago told the President they are OK. But in this amendment, one portion the Senator from California strikes is a provision that could be freestanding and important. It has nothing whatsoever to do with a new weapons system. It just says bring the test site in Nevada current so it doesn't take 3 years if you make a decision to use it. One portion does that. Instead of letting that system in Nevada degenerate so that if you need it, it will take 3 years to build it up, part of this amendment says move it along so it is only 18 months.
If you want to conclude that is in there because we want to build a whole new system of weapons, you can do that. But the truth is it is in there because the time has come to get it more relevant to the problems we may be confronted with in terms of one of these directors saying we had better test the weapon. Then we have to wait 3 years. Part of this amendment says no, you will only have to wait 1\1/2\ years. That part should pass under all circumstances. Why the United States House of Representatives said no, I can't understand. The Senate said yes already, overwhelmingly.
This amendment would take it out and say leave it at 3 years; let the reliability kind of lie in wait in case we need it to test a weapon; let it be 3 years instead of 1\1/2\ years.
The second part of this amendment: There is no use today on the floor of the Senate in terms of this amendment to talk about the fact that years ago we had 40,000 nuclear weapons and the Soviet Union had 60,000. Those are true numbers. That happened. I am not sure the last number is right, but it is plenty more than 40,000. We are on the way down substantially while three or four new countries are added that I don't think had anything to do with this amendment. Pakistan had nothing to do with this amendment as they developed their nuclear weapon. I don't believe this amendment has anything to do with the North Koreans. This amendment says get that site ready in case we have to test the weapons we own.
We can get up here and talk all we want about America is already building new nuclear weapons, but it isn't true. If any Senator stands up here and says we are making new nuclear weapons and they are just little nuclear weapons, I submit they ought to ask anybody they want under oath anywhere in the Government, and the answer will be we aren't, we haven't, and we will not build a nuclear weapon until Congress says we can.
Building a nuclear weapon is not in this language. Look at it. Look at every single word. See if it says you are going to build one nuclear weapon with the money in this appropriations bill. It in no way permits the building of a nuclear weapon. It does what I said about the Nevada Test Site. It says to our scientists at these laboratories, In the meantime you can study, you can research weapons of the future. And it names the kinds of things we might be looking at in the future.
I submit that for a great nation to say anything to its scientists but you can do that is absolutely crazy. Do you mean we are going to tell these great scientists we don't know what is going to be here in 15 years, but you better not be studying what kind of weapons we are going to need in 15 years because we are scared of that, we think that means we are going to build new weapons? I don't believe that. I believe they ought to be permitted to study. They ought to be permitted to think. We ought to be wondering about underground chemical plants that might be building things to destroy the world. I see nothing wrong with that. I do not see that as threatening to anyone, for it builds nothing. If anything, it builds brainpower on the part of the great scientists, and that is it.
The last one about a plant to manufacture pits: This request says that for the next 40 years--40 years--we may need pit replacements from time to time for our nuclear weapons. That is a given. It says let us design the complex to do that.
This amendment doesn't say cut it in half, we don't want you to make it so big. We say send us the plans and we will look at them. This says don't do it. Why not do it? Every other country with nuclear weapons has spare pits, I regret to say. But for us, it doesn't mean much. Nobody has to be scared. That doesn't mean next week or next month, but it is something our experts are saying shouldn't exist too long. And we are busy trying to build a couple in a makeshift manner, to which my friend from California alludes. It is not a factory. It will not take care of 30 or 40 years of the future. It is a makeshift assembly in the city of Los Alamos as part of the research laboratory. It has been a devil of a job for them to manufacture consistent with the need for a plutonium pit for a nuclear weapon.
Today we are discussing things which we hardly ever discuss. But I believe at 10 minutes of 5 on the 15th day of September on a Monday, if we were authorizing the building of new nuclear weapons, there would be a block of Senators on this floor. There would be steam heat from those who oppose it.
The truth is that isn't what the amendment does. It is not an amendment that will build any new nuclear bombs.
I repeat: As important as it is, and as magnificent as the Senator from California is in her presentation on September 15, it is not an amendment that has anything to do with building or not building nuclear weapons, for we are not authorizing that. It won't happen because of what we are doing. And she won't stop it from happening with her amendment because it isn't happening to begin with.
Essentially, the Senator indicated it is a moral issue. That is an easy term to throw around--a moral issue. I could probably say it is a moral issue, also. I understand it in stark, objective terms. It does not frighten me a bit.
As a matter of fact, I am more frightened to think of having the scientists who have manned our nuclear laboratories told they cannot think and plan for the future regardless of what their great brains say might be around the corner, over the hill, or in some decade to come, for these United States. That frightens me more and creates more of a moral issue than the issue that is not even an issue, to wit, we are building more nuclear weapons, a new arsenal, and the like.
It cannot be a moral issue for me because a negative can hardly be. If you are not doing it, it does not seem to me to be an issue, moral or otherwise. That is how I see it.
The Senator suspects we will win. I am not sure. If the Senate has any consistency, we should. We already won once. In fact, since then we have learned a lot more. But we have reduced it to dollars and to programs that had been authorized. It is easier to see what we are and are not doing in this amendment, in this appropriations bill, than it was when we voted in favor of the authorization bill. I am not sure how it will come out. I am not sure what will happen in the House. I guarantee if the Senate votes to go to conference with the language we have written in this bill that came out of Appropriations, we will consider it a very important issue for America's future. It will not be easy to give it away to a House that canceled it and spent the money on water projects instead of these issues. That was the outcome.
Madam President, let me answer this way: I don't believe there is a single member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a single expert in the United States of America on its nuclear weapons arsenal, that if asked would they prefer that the Nevada Test Site be ready for tests in 18 months or 3 years, would not answer: 18 months; 3 years is too long.
If you ask me, I will tell you. I believe there is no one who is certain that over time what we are doing is going to work and that we are not going to have to go to testing at some time. Almost everyone says that. Since they say it, I am confident they would rather have the Nevada Test Site ready in a shorter timeframe rather than longer.
I thank the Senator for the question. I yield the floor.