[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 18 (Thursday, February 17, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1582-S1583]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               THE BUDGET

  Mr. DORGAN. Madam President, as we begin to debate the budget sent to 
us by President Bush, there will be a lot of discussion in the Chamber 
about spending restraints, about being conservative, and so on. The 
budget sent to us by President Bush proposes the highest budget deficit 
in the history of our country. I will be going to a hearing later this 
morning on the proposal to spend $82 billion more on Iraq and 
Afghanistan. That is not in the budget. It is an emergency request.
  The President's proposed budget, with a deficit well over $400 
billion in history, is short by somewhere around $80 billion that will 
be spent on an emergency in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it also uses the 
Social Security trust fund, which could not be used for other purposes. 
So the real budget deficit is around $650 billion, which is a very 
serious problem. Our fiscal policy is off track, and we need to get it 
on track.
  We are going to talk about spending issues as we go along in this 
budget process. There will be some discussion about big issues, and 
some about small issues.
  Let me talk for a moment about two issues that represent, I think, a 
profound waste of taxpayers' money.
  Let me introduce you to Fat Albert. This is an AEROSAT blimp, an 
AEROSAT balloon. Fat Albert has been around for some while. In fact, 
Fat Albert is tethered about 20,000 feet above the ground with 
thousands of feet of cable, and it is used with camera equipment to 
send television signals into Cuba to tell the Cuban people how 
wonderful life is in our country. Of course, they know how wonderful 
life is in our country, which is why they get on a boat to try to cross 
the waters to come to America. And if they decide not to get on the 
boat, they can simply tune into a Miami radio station and hear a little 
about America. But we are sending television signals into Cuba through 
TV Marti, which has been funded by the American taxpayers for 16 years.
  We are broadcasting television signals which no one can see because 
Castro easily jams the signal. We did for a long while televise it from 
3 o'clock in the morning until 8 o'clock in the morning. My guess is 
that, even if the signals got through, there aren't a lot of Cuban 
people up at 3 o'clock in the morning watching television. But, 
nonetheless, the signals don't get through because they are jammed by 
the Cuban Government.
  For 16 years, despite the fact that we are broadcasting signals which 
no one can see, we have spent $189 million broadcasting signals from 
Fat Albert, tethered 20,000 feet above the ground, to Cubans who can't 
see it.
  This year, what does the budget request? The budget request is to 
double the funding for TV Marti. It is unbelievable. People will not 
understand this when they look back and say, Wait a second; they spent 
nearly a quarter of $1 billion sending television signals no one could 
see for over 16 years? They will say, do you mean that at a time with 
record deficits the President wanted to double the budget for 
television signals no one can see?
  Fat Albert once got loose with 20,000 feet of tethered cable 
following it. Fat Albert wandered into the Everglades. So the thing 
gets loose and goes over the Everglades, and they are chasing it with 
helicopters. Finally, it lands on the top of some trees in the 
Everglades. They had to find a way to get it off. Helicopters had to 
come down and commandos rappelled down to salvage the equipment. It is 
a comedy of errors.
  But the administration has a plan now. They have decided they are 
going to get rid of Fat Albert, or maybe continue to use it but only 
part time. Now they want to buy an airplane for $8 million so they can 
send an airplane up to send television signals to TV Marti to the Cuban 
people who can't see them; $8 million for the airplane, $11 million for 
the broadcast, and $2 million for maintenance on the plane.
  It is like Katy bar the door; it is as if there is no deficit.
  It is unbelievable to me that we are going to continue to spend money 
we do not have on something we do not need, and send television signals 
from an aerostat balloon and now an airplane that viewers cannot see. 
This does not pass the laugh test.
  I am no fan of Fidel Castro. I want the Cuban people to be free. I 
want democracy to come to Cuba.
  But our country has decided, with China and with North Vietnam, both 
Communist countries, the best way to move a Communist country in the 
right direction is through travel and trade, through engagement. We 
have followed that rule with Communist China and Communist Vietnam, 
encouraging people to travel there and encouraging trade with both. The 
sole exception is with Cuba, where we have had an embargo for over 40 
years. Fidel Castro has lived through 10 U.S. Presidencies. His message 
to the Cuban people is, of course, Our economy is in tatters; we have a 
500-pound gorilla with its fist around our neck with an embargo.
  The quicker way to remove Castro from office, in my judgment, is to 
open trade and travel to Cuba. Nonetheless, the administration does not 
want to do that.
  So we have travel restrictions in Cuba. I have held up a poster of 
Joni Scott who went to Cuba to distribute free Bibles on the street 
corners in Havana. Do you know what happened to her? She got discovered 
by the U.S. Treasury Department and they slapped her with a $10,000 
fine. I held up a picture of Joan Sloat who was a retired senior 
bicyclist who joined a Canadian bicycle troop to go biking in Cuba. 
They tracked her down as she was by her son's bedside, dying of brain 
cancer, and they decided to slap her with a big fine and then decided 
to attach her Social Security payments.
  They are so obsessed in this administration with the issue of Cuba it 
does not matter how much money they waste. We have something called the 
Office of Foreign Assets Control, OFAC, down in the Treasury 
Department. It is supposed to be tracking the financing of terrorist 
organizations. Do you know what? They have nearly twice as many people 
working on tracking Americans suspected of taking a vacation in Cuba 
than they do tracking terrorists' moneys that are supporting Osama bin 
Laden's organization. It is unthinkable that is what they are doing, 
but that is what they are doing.
  On top of all of that obsession, what we have is a program called 
Television Marti which does not work, which wastes every dollar it 
spends, and the President says, Let's double the funding, at a time 
when we have the highest budget deficit in the history of this country.
  There are some areas of Federal spending that ought to be abolished. 
I, along with my colleague Senator Wyden and others, will offer 
legislation to abolish this spending. It is unbelievable.
  I didn't mention that on October 10, 2003, the President held a Rose 
Garden event to say he was going to supplement the efforts of Fat 
Albert to send signals to the Cubans because they are jammed, by taking 
a high-tech airplane, called a Commando Solo C-130. There are only a 
handful in the world and we have used them in big trouble spots in the 
world to be able to broadcast emergency signals to people. But the 
President announced he was going

[[Page S1583]]

to use a National Guard Commando Solo C-130 to broadcast signals into 
Cuba. So they have been using Defense Department funds to broadcast 
signals to Cuba that are jammed. It is not enough, apparently, to 
broadcast signals from a big old aerostat balloon that the Cuban people 
cannot see, now we have a highly sophisticated C-130. And now even that 
is not enough. Now they want to buy a new airplane in this budget.
  My hope is there are enough people in the Congress who understand 
waste is waste, not Republican waste or Democratic waste. Just waste. 
When it does not stand the test of common sense, and it does not even 
stand the basic laugh test with this kind of spending, my hope is 
Members of the Senate will join and decide this is the sort of thing 
that ought to be abolished.

  One final point. I don't come here to try to abolish Radio Marti, 
although I don't think it is necessary. Radio Marti is broadcasting 
radio signals into Florida. They are often not jammed. The Cuban people 
receive them. I have been to Cuba and talked to the dissidents. They 
receive Radio Marti's broadcast. I don't propose we abolish it. But 
they do not see the Television Marti broadcast. We still have expensive 
studio space, pay expensive salaries, have aerosat balloons and now 
airplanes to broadcast it, despite the fact we know it is a complete, 
total waste of money. We know better than this. We ought to understand 
it and abolish it in this year's budget submitted by the President.
  Let me mention one other area of spending that desperately needs to 
be abolished in this budget. It is not giant; it is $8 million. But 
take $11 million for Fat Albert and the new airplane and Television 
Marti and $8 million here and there, and pretty soon we have a 
significant amount of money.
  Last year and this year, the President recommended we build 
additional nuclear weapons--begin planning the design--and they 
especially talked about the earth-penetrating bunker buster nuclear 
weapon. Last year, the Congress said no. The President put it in his 
budget again this year. He wants $8 million to revive the project to 
create new earth-penetrating bunker buster nuclear weapons. The 
implication of creating a designer nuclear weapon is, we do not have 
enough nuclear weapons at the moment and they are perfectly usable if 
we find someone crawled in a cave or carrying on operations in a cave 
that we want to get to that we cannot get to.
  If a country like ours is to send a signal to the rest of the world 
that we do not have enough nuclear weapons, that we believe we should 
design more nuclear weapons, that designer nuclear weapons make sense, 
and that nuclear weapons are usable, that is exactly the wrong signal 
to send to anyone in this world. The exclusive opportunity and 
requirement for us is to send a signal to the world that nuclear 
weapons should never again be used in anger under any circumstance.
  We have thousands of them. The loss of one would cause an apoplectic 
seizure among the cities in our country. There was a time when it was 
thought one nuclear weapon from the Russian arsenal was stolen and it 
caused a great seizure among intelligence organizations and others 
because were a terrorist able to steal one nuclear weapon and threaten 
to detonate one nuclear weapon in a major American city, we are not 
talking about 100 deaths or 1,000 deaths, we are talking about hundreds 
of thousands of deaths. The loss of one nuclear weapon would be 
devastating if it got into the hands of terrorists.
  We have thousands and thousands of nuclear weapons in this country. 
The estimate is somewhere--of course, it is classified--the estimate 
range of the Russian stockpile is somewhere perhaps in the area of 
15,000 nuclear weapons; ours is something less than that but not much 
less than that. We have thousands and thousands and thousands of 
nuclear weapons between us and the Russians, with some other countries 
who have now joined that club who have nuclear weapons but are fewer in 
number.
  The suggestion somehow that we do not have enough nuclear weapons, 
that we need more nuclear weapons, and that nuclear weapons are usable, 
especially if we have an issue with people holing up in a cave or 
strategic materials holed up in a cave, that we cannot get to that, so 
we can lob in an earth penetrator, a designer bunker buster nuclear 
weapon, and that we can use it--that message from this country is a 
devastating message that sets back the opportunity for this country to 
play a leadership role in stopping the spread of nuclear weapons 
everywhere, making sure we do not ever have testing of nuclear weapons 
anywhere. It is our job, our responsibility, to be a world leader on 
this issue.

  Given the new reality of the war on terrorism and what terrorists 
would like to do with respect to weapons of mass destruction, if our 
country does not try to do everything humanly possible to stop the 
spread of nuclear weapons and make people understand it is unthinkable 
that nuclear weapons will once again be used on this Earth, then we 
will have failed. Our children and grandchildren will almost certainly 
see at some point an expansion of those countries that have nuclear 
weapons, the stealing of a nuclear weapon by a terrorist organization 
and the detonation of a nuclear weapon in a major city in this world 
and perhaps in this country. We must exert every possible effort to see 
that does not happen.
  Sending a budget that says we need to begin work on designing 
additional nuclear weapons, new nuclear weapons, and nuclear weapons 
that are designed for specific purposes such as penetrating the Earth 
and busting caves, with the implication that it is clearly something we 
could, should, and would use under certain circumstances, is exactly 
the wrong approach and a dangerous message from this country, 
especially.
  The burden falls on our shoulders to be a leader in stopping the 
proliferation of nuclear weapons. It retards rather than advances those 
interests to see from this administration talk in some circles that is 
reckless and recommendations that are counterproductive to suggest we 
ought to begin, again, building nuclear weapons.
  In addition to this recommendation to spend $8 million to revive the 
project of a nuclear earth-penetrator bunker buster, there is talk of 
testing nuclear weapons, resuming testing of nuclear weapons which, of 
course, then would be a green light for others to say, if the United 
States is going to test, we are going to test.
  My hope is we can understand the profound danger that exists if we do 
not take this proliferation issue seriously and if we do not 
immediately assume the mantle of responsibility to be the world leader 
to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. This is not about a nuisance. 
This is not about a threat. This is about a potential catastrophe 
unlike anything we have discussed or thought about with respect to 
weapons of mass destruction in the hands of the wrong people. That is 
why the responsibility is such an ominous responsibility that falls on 
our shoulders. It is one that we can meet, in my judgment, but we have 
to be clear thinking.
  We need a President and a Congress, together, that will reject the 
approach that says we should begin building additional nuclear weapons 
or begin researching and talking about the need for additional weapons 
we can use for designer purposes.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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