[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 36 (Tuesday, March 6, 2012)]
[House]
[Page H1162]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    OUR LEGACY TO A NEW GENERATION: A WORLD FREE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
California (Ms. Woolsey) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Madam Speaker, there was good news on the national 
security front last week. North Korea, one of the most dangerous rogue 
nations on the Earth, far more dangerous than Iraq was when we invaded 
9 years ago, has agreed to suspend nuclear weapons activity. Through 
careful diplomacy, the Obama administration has secured this concession 
by offering badly needed nutritional assistance to North Koreans.
  The North Korean regime has also consented to stop uranium 
enrichment, impose an important moratorium on long-range missile 
testing, and allow international weapons inspectors into the country 
for the first time in 3 years.
  Of course, we must remain cautious, and we must remain vigilant in 
our dealings with North Korea. But it's clear that peaceful 
negotiations and diplomacy, as opposed to saber rattling that we've 
seen much too often in the recent past, is advancing our national 
security interests and moving us closer to a future of peace and 
security.
  The President and Secretary Clinton deserve credit for this 
breakthrough. They have made nonproliferation and the securing of loose 
nuclear material top priorities. The New START Treaty represented a 
critical step in finally putting the Cold War behind us and increasing 
security cooperation between Russia and the United States.
  It's my hope now that we will be bolder and more ambitious because 
it's time for the United States to exercise global leadership and true 
statesmanship, and move toward complete dismantling of our nuclear 
arsenal. That's exactly the long-term goal we committed to as a Nation 
when we signed the NPT 40 years ago.
  To that end, Madam Speaker, I've introduced a resolution called NO 
NUKES, which stands for Nonproliferation Options for Nuclear 
Understanding to Keep Everyone Safe. NO NUKES. NO NUKES moves us 
aggressively in that direction.
  It makes no sense at all that we have thousands of nuclear warheads 
when just one of them has the power to end life on Earth as we know it.
  And if that's not good enough, eliminating nuclear weapons isn't just 
a matter of human rights and moral urgency, it's also a big budget item 
at a time when we must be exercising fiscal restraint.

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  We currently spend over $50 billion a year on maintenance of our 
existing nuclear arsenal. How about we invest that money on programs 
that save lives instead of weapons designed to destroy life? For nearly 
a decade now, we've defended our country and its interests by sending 
thousands of troops to die in a foreign war that isn't making America 
safer but is costing Americans billions of dollars every month.
  Madam Speaker, there has to be a different way. My SMART Security 
Platform advances the idea that we make the world safer, not through 
acts of war and arms escalation, but through cooperation and conflict 
resolution.
  For nearly my entire life, the world has lived under a shadow of 
nuclear confrontation. My oldest child turned 50 over the weekend. He 
was an infant in my arms during the terrifying days of the Cuban 
Missile Crisis. We can't make another generation go through that.
  Actually, my 7-year-old grandson, Jake Eddie, is joining me in 
Washington this week, and I believe it is our responsibility to make a 
promise to him and to his classmates and his peers. Our legacy to them 
must be a world free of nuclear weapons. Our legacy to them must be a 
peaceful future. And one step in the right direction, in the memory of 
Donald Payne, is to bring our troops home from Afghanistan.

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