[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 2]
[House]
[Pages 2669-2670]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




           SMART SECURITY AND FISCAL YEAR 2006 DEFENSE BUDGET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Mr. Speaker, the Bush's administration national security 
priorities are so out of balance that it is hard to know where to 
begin. Between the debacle in Iraq, the failure to address America's 
true homeland security needs and funding for research on new nuclear 
weapons, there are plenty of options to choose from.
  Last October during the final Presidential debate before the November 
election, President Bush claimed that the gravest threat America faces 
is the threat of nuclear attack. Unfortunately, the President has done 
very little to address this threat.
  One of the primary nuclear threats America faces is the development 
of such hostile weapons by countries like Iran and North Korea. That is 
why we need to engage these nations in aggressive diplomacy, not 
aggressive saber rattling.
  Earlier this week, North Korea indicated that it wishes to hold 
bilateral talks with the United States, presumably to receive financial 
assistance in exchange for dismantling its nuclear weapons program. 
Iran, on the other hand, feels threatened by recent whispers that the 
Bush administration might attempt a military assault on their nuclear 
weapons facilities.
  We absolutely must negotiate with both countries. After using the 
U.S. military to take down Saddam Hussein, this President probably 
thinks that negotiations are beneath him; but I have got news for the 
Bush administration. Negotiations work and foreign assistance works. We 
need to start relying more on nonmilitary security tools to work out 
our international differences.
  The other major nuclear threat comes not from foreign countries, but 
from terrorist organizations like al Qaeda. To address this threat, we 
must secure the nuclear stockpiles that are out there before they get 
into the hands of terrorists.
  Most people agree that the best program to secure nuclear materials 
is the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, or CTR, which enlists the 
Department of Defense to dismantle nuclear warheads, reduce nuclear 
stockpiles, and secure nuclear weapons and materials in the states of 
the former Soviet Union.
  CTR is crucial in keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of 
terrorists. Terrorists know that it would not be difficult to steal 
material from poorly guarded nuclear plants in Russia. That is why it 
is important to increase our funding for CTR and provide funding to 
extend the program so that other regions of the world can be included.
  Last year, the Cooperative Threat Reduction program received only 
$409 million from the Defense budget, and the Department of Defense did 
not even use all of this money. We should triple or quadruple our funds 
and our efforts for CTR in the fiscal year 2006 budget, and we should 
extend this vital program to other countries where nuclear materials 
are not safely guarded, countries like Iran, North Korea, Libya, and 
Pakistan.
  Instead of continuing down our current path, Mr. Speaker, I believe 
we must pursue a new national, smarter security strategy that I call 
SMART security, which is a Sensible Multilateral American Response to 
Terrorism for the 21st century.
  I have also introduced H. Con. Res. 35, legislation that would pursue 
a smarter strategy for rebuilding Iraq. Twenty-eight of my House 
colleagues have joined me in offering this important legislation.
  The immoral and ill-conceived war in Iraq has already claimed the 
lives of nearly 1,500 American troops. Another 11,000 have been gravely 
wounded as a result of this war, and the 150,000 soldiers that remain 
in Iraq are sitting ducks, sitting ducks for Iraq's growing insurgency. 
I am sure that many of these soldiers understand what our

[[Page 2670]]

President does not, that the military option is not working.
  Yet the President and his administration refuse to consider 
alternatives to the way we are handling the situation in Iraq. Think 
about the good that could be accomplished if even a fraction of the 
billions that have been spent on military operations were instead spent 
on nonmilitary security.
  We could help secure Iraq by rebuilding schools so that their 
children could learn, constructing new water processing plants so that 
the Iraqi people could have clean water to drink, and building new 
roads so that citizens can travel safely from one city to another.
  Our assistance should not end there. If we want to be truly smart 
about how we rebuild Iraq, we also need to bring nongovernmental 
organizations and humanitarian agencies into this country to help 
create a robust civil society and ensure that Iraq's economic 
infrastructure becomes fully viable.

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