[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 50 (Thursday, April 27, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3013-S3014]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        NATIONAL MISSILE DEFENSE

  Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, just a few days ago, the Congressional 
Budget Office released a paper entitled ``Budgetary and Technical 
Implications of the Administration's Plan for National Missile 
Defense.'' I bring this paper to the Senate's attention because I 
believe it is misleading and confusing. It has given support to critics 
of the program who also have contributed to the confusion.
  Some reporters and editors have characterized this study as a 
``budget estimate'' of our National Missile Defense program which shows 
that the costs will be far higher than previously predicted. This is 
not so.
  The paper is not a budgetary scoring of legislation that the CBO 
traditionally engages in. This is a paper of a kind the CBO 
occasionally produces in response to Congressional requests, providing 
it can spare analysts from their other duties. The request for this 
paper was recently made by members of the Senate and the CBO 
acknowledges that it had insufficient time to fully consider all of the 
questions it was asked to address.
  The paper puts the total cost for a National Missile Defense system 
at $49 billion. I say ``a'' National Missile Defense system because the 
CBO paper did not examine the program actually in place and for which 
we have received estimates in the past, but rather one that its 
analysts thought should be in place. Mr. Ken Bacon, the Defense 
Department spokesman, characterized the estimate as an ``apples to gold 
apples'' comparison.
  The Defense Department has stated previously that acquisition and 
operation of a single site NMD system with 100 interceptors would cost 
$25.6 billion through 2015. The CBO estimate of $49 billion is for a 
dual site NMD system with 250 interceptors. Some news reports, such as 
one published in the Wall Street Journal on April 25th have erroneously 
reported a figure of $60 billion for this year, which they arrive at by 
adding the cost of Space-Based Infrared Satellites. However, even the 
CBO paper correctly notes that those satellites will serve other 
missile defense programs, as well as other entirely different mission 
areas, and are not part of the cost of the NMD system.
  Mr. President, I am convinced that a single interceptor site by 
itself will be insufficient to adequately protect the United States 
from missile attack, and additional capability will be needed. Whether 
that should be a second ground-based site, as the CBO paper assumes, 
one based at sea, or some other approach remains to be determined. But 
we should not confuse the CBO's ``golden apple'' estimate with the 
estimates we have received previously, which address a different, 
single site NMD system.
  Even where the CBO paper tried to make a direct comparison, it still 
based its estimate on the program it thought should exist rather than 
the one that does. For example, the paper determined that the Ballistic 
Missile Defense Organization should buy 75 percent more interceptor 
missiles than it plans to for testing and spares in the so-called 
``Capability 1'' single site system. It made different assumptions 
about construction costs, using the 30 year old Safeguard system in 
North Dakota as its model. And it based its costs on 30 operational 
flight tests over the first five years of system operation, three times 
the number actually planned.
  Projecting costs for a complex weapon system still under development 
is an uncertain enterprise, and different analysts can reasonably reach 
different conclusions about what assumptions are warranted. It would 
have been reasonable for CBO to present its conclusions to those who 
are actually building the NMD system and seek their views on whether 
the different assumptions were warranted. This, after all, is the 
procedure followed by the General Accounting Office when it produces 
such a study. It sends out a draft for comment by the relevant agencies 
and either incorporates the comments of those agencies or explains why 
it does not agree. Unfortunately, we have been told by the Ballistic 
Missile Defense Organization that, despite repeated offers to assess 
the CBO findings, CBO declined to present its conclusions before 
publishing this paper. That is unfortunate; had it done so, there might 
be less confusion about what this paper says.
  I believe it is also important to note some costs that CBO did not 
consider in this study.
  The study doesn't examine the potential costs to the United States of 
not having a missile defense system. We should keep in mind that the 
NMD program is not like a new tactical fighter or guided missile 
destroyer or armored vehicle, replacing an earlier generation. We have 
no defense against long-range ballistic missiles launched against our 
territory. That means that should the day come when some nation--for 
whatever reason--launches a missile at the United States, without a 
National Missile Defense system we will have no choice but to watch 
that missile strike its target. If that missile is equipped with a 
weapon of mass destruction, the results would be the most catastrophic 
event ever to take place in the United States. An assessment of these 
costs is nowhere to be found in the CBO report.
  Nor is the cost to U.S. leadership of our continued vulnerability to 
missile attack. A missile doesn't have to be used to be useful in 
deterring actions by other nations, and we need only look at our own 
experience to confirm that. The United States has spent hundreds of 
billions of dollars on ballistic missiles over the last 40 years, none 
of which have ever been used. We did so because we believed those 
weapons would deter other nations from taking certain actions that 
would harm our interests.
  The United States can be deterred, too, by the threat of missile 
attack. Our former colleague, Secretary of Defense Cohen, provided an 
example of how that can happen when he spoke to our Allies in Munich in 
February. He said,

       If Saddam Hussein had five or ten or twenty ICBMs with 
     nuclear warheads, and he said that, if you try to expel me 
     from Kuwait, I'll put one in Berlin, one in Munich, one in 
     New York, one in Washington, one in Los Angeles, etc., one in 
     Rome--let's spread the wealth, one in England, London--how 
     many would have been quite so eager to support the deployment 
     of some five hundred thousand convention troops to expel him 
     from Kuwait? We would have had a different calculation, 
     asking, ``What kind of a risk are we running? . . .
       We never want to be in the position of being blackmailed by 
     anyone who will prevent us from carrying out our Article 5 
     obligations or responding to any threat to our national 
     security interests.''

  Ther are significant costs to the ability of the United States to act 
in its national interests if it is vulnerable to missile attack. This 
report from the CBO doesn't place a dollar value on that.

[[Page S3014]]

  Mr. President, while our debates on various defense programs can be 
served by additional views, I think this new paper from the 
Congressional Budget Office has done more to create confusion than to 
contribute usefully to the debate. I urge Senators to keep its 
limitations in mind as they consider it.

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