[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 83 (Monday, May 21, 2007)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1098-E1099]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2008

                                 ______
                                 

                               speech of

                            HON. GWEN MOORE

                              of wisconsin

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, May 16, 2007

       The House in Committee of the Whole House on the State of 
     the Union had under consideration the bill (H.R. 1585) to 
     authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2008 for military 
     activities of the Department of Defense, to prescribe 
     military personnel strengths for fiscal year 2008, and for 
     other purposes:

  Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Madam Chairman, as we debate the FY 2008 
Defense Authorization bill, I am pleased to note the effort by my 
colleagues in working to ensure that our national defense funding and 
policy are focused on programs that will make our country safer and 
provide our troops in harm's way with the resources they need today.
  I support making sure that Congress wisely, as well as robustly, 
provide for our national defense, including ensuring dollars are spent 
on systems that will actually protect our Nation and our allies. One of 
those systems drawing new attention during this debate is missile 
defense. Our country has already spent over $100 billion over the last 
several decades to develop various missile defense systems. These Cold 
War efforts for which annual funding has increased from $3 billion in 
the late 1990s to nearly $10 billion have yet to bear fruit, even as 
our country faces the grave threat posed by terrorists smuggling 
nuclear weapons into our country across our borders or through our 
ports.
  Supporters will point to successful tests recently of portions of 
this system. However, we all know the challenges of replicating limited 
success from carefully and highly scripted tests in real world 
conditions. Given that participants knew roughly when the test target 
would launch, what they would look like, how they would fly and what 
they would do, it may be even more concerning that these systems missed 
as often as they did.
  I am troubled when I hear experts such as the Government 
Accountability Office report that while costs have grown, less work is 
being completed than planned. GAO found that ``too few tests have been 
completed to have confidence in the models and simulations used to 
predict performance.'' One year after establishing 2006 goals for the 
program, the Missile Defense agency informed Congress that it planned 
to field fewer assets, reduce performance goals, and increase the 
program's cost goal.
  Our citizens and our allies and their citizens are not made safer by 
rushing to deploy technology that ``may'' protect them when called 
upon.
  The solution to a flat tire is not to blow more air into it. We 
cannot afford to expend valuable national defense dollars to develop 
technologies that we know today will not work at a time when these 
funds can be spent to improve our homeland security, provide needed 
equipment for our troops in the field, or increase foreign aid to our 
allies.
  I am sure there is no need to remind my colleagues that the $8.1 
billion provided in the bill for the missile system is more than is 
currently authorized for port security grants or included in the recent 
House-passed COPS reauthorization bill to put more police officers on 
our streets.
  Some have attempted to muddle this issue by inserting the nation of 
Israel into the missile defense issue. Our Nation recognizes the 
importance of our ally Israel and provides over $2 billion in foreign 
military aid to help that nation meet its unique security challenges. 
However, simply putting more unproven, insufficiently tested, and 
unreliable missile defense systems into the field does not make our 
country or our allies safer.
  I certainly believe the purpose of this $645 billion Defense 
authorization bill is to help make our country safer including 
assisting our

[[Page E1099]]

allies. If we truly want to help protect important allies like Israel, 
let's develop and share with them defensive systems that will work 
effectively, reliably, and consistently. The history of this program 
has shown me that simply providing more funds will not accomplish that 
goal.

                          ____________________