[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 8]
[House]
[Page 10373]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                      NO NATIONAL MISSILE DEFENSE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Speaker, since the Reagan administration, we have 
been urged by wishful thinkers to deploy a system for which workable 
technologies does not exist, and now many years and billions and 
billions of dollars later the Bush administration is still pursuing 
what I view is an irresponsible, unnecessary and unrealistic policy.
  Mr. Speaker, the fact that it does not work and we have heard experts 
talk about how much it does not work is actually not the most important 
thing to me. The most important thing is that it really should not 
work, because I fear that moving forward with national missile defense 
will actually undermine our security by igniting Cold War II and will 
reverse the diplomatic progress we have made over the last decade. It 
will make us less safe and less secure.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. 
Tierney).
  Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. 
Schakowsky) for yielding to me.
  Let me just end this hour-plus, with the courtesy of our colleague, 
by saying that this administration, as I started off by saying, has a 
ready, shoot, in-their-name approach to this whole policy. This is much 
like what has been going on with a number of the policies of this 
administration. They have unilaterally claimed that the Kyoto Protocol 
was dead. They have started to retract on that and are now talking 
about limitations on carbon dioxide and talking about cooperating with 
our international friends.
  They have asserted that a pull-out of forces from the Balkans was 
imminent and now they are talking about cooperating and being sure that 
they do not pull out unilaterally.
  They have talked about an express intent not to engage in the Middle 
East but reality has struck there and they have not only one envoy by 
two over there. They have talked about halting diplomatic initiatives 
in North Korea and now, in fact, they are starting to engage, or at 
least in all of these respects they are using semantics in talking 
about that. I hope they are being truthful in their attempt to move 
forward in that regard, although I fear that they may be just sort of 
smoothing and massaging what is going on while the President is abroad.
  Today, their administration policies have always been leap before you 
think, leap before you look, whether it is domestic policy on the tax 
cut that cuts enormous amounts of money without deciding what we have 
for needs first or for obligations, and now we are talking about a 
national missile defense system which decidedly has not been proven to 
work, decidedly has not been tested and decidedly does not have tests 
planed to move us forward in that regard.
  Now I understand that the Department of Defense is going to tell us 
that they are pulling back and in fact they are going to start a 
testing regime, with a white team and a blue team and a red team that 
are going to throw up countermeasures and test against them and have 
somebody evaluate that.
  The fact of the matter is, Secretary of Defense Mr. Rumsfeld is still 
talking about deploying and moving forward at tremendous cost, not only 
financially but in terms of relationships and diplomatic relationships 
with other nations, even before we determine whether or not the system 
can work, even before we determine whether or not it fits within our 
priorities, given all the other needs that we have in national security 
and otherwise, and even before we determine whether or not it is going 
to fit into the plans of stability for this Nation and the world.
  So I hope that this tonight was a start in a conversation on this. I 
hope that we can impress upon the Secretary of Defense to allow us to 
release to the public Mr. Coyle's report from the OT&E office so that 
we can discuss that and debate it openly. It talks about some serious 
reservations and some serious concerns about moving forward and 
deploying before, in fact, we should be.
  I thank the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky) for joining us 
on that and all the other Members who participated tonight and I look 
forward to an open debate so the American people can really understand 
what is involved here and what is at stake and the dangers and 
responsibilities attendant to it.

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