Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2013

Floor Speech

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Mr. MARKEY. I thank the gentleman.

Mr. Dicks and I started 36 years ago at the height of the Cold War, with each country building more and more nuclear weapons, more and more defense systems in an ever escalating war of nerves that kept both countries and the whole world on edge.

In this Republican fantasy land, gold-plated nuclear weapons systems budget, there are going to be programs that have long outlived their usefulness that are lavished with canyons filled with cash. In this fantasy land, the Cold War never ended. The Soviet menace lives on, making it necessary to maintain vast stockpiles of nuclear weapons and build new bombers to penetrate the Iron Curtain. In this fantasy land, there are mountains of money for intercontinental ballistic missiles towering over the landscape and providing shade and comfort to the legions of defense contractors making nuclear weapons we no longer need and we can no longer afford. In this fantasy land, the Republicans want to retroactively re-fight the Cold War that we won. This makes no sense.

Mr. Chairman, it is time to get real. Sequestration is coming. The Republicans, in their budget, are ignoring the doomsday clock that has nearly reached midnight for millions of hardworking Americans. We must prepare for this reality. The bill the Republicans have brought to the floor today provides the Pentagon with a billion more dollars than this year's spending level, and $3 billion more than the Obama administration requested. Despite sequestration, despite budget pressures, despite the fragility of the economy, the Republicans still want to increase defense spending. Why? To pay for more radioactive relics of the past that no longer are needed in order to protect our country.

But I have good news for my friends on the other side of the aisle: the Cold War ended more than 20 years ago. The Soviet Union crumbled. It's okay to stop funding nuclear weapons to perpetuate a Cold War rivalry that has disappeared into the mists of history. We don't have to buy into this insanity. That is why I plan to offer several sane amendments to reduce Pentagon spending on unnecessary, outdated nuclear weapons programs.

Here is the bottom line: beginning January 1 of next year, 5 months from now, $55 billion has to be cut out of the defense budget and $55 billion has to be cut out of civilian social programs. That is $55 billion and $55 billion apiece. The Republicans are increasing defense spending heading into that. Moreover, they're saying, Don't cut defense at all, cut the social programs.

What does that mean? That means cutting the NIH, cutting CDC, cutting the National Cancer Institute. They're already going to be cut under sequestration. What the Republicans are proposing is to really create a true doomsday machine, and that doomsday machine is the lack of a cure for Alzheimer's, for Parkinson's, for all of the other diseases which actually do pose a terrorist threat to families across the country when they get the call that once more that disease has come through their family because we--that is, the Republicans--have decided that they're going to continue to cut the research for the cure for disease and instead build more nuclear weapons to be aimed at targets that no longer exist.

This is an important debate to have. It's a sequestration anticipation debate where we begin to be forced to get real. We have to have a debate about what the priorities in the 21st century are going to be, and not some Dr. Strangelove smiling from his grave, being so happy that we're still debating additional nuclear weapons.

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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Chairman, in this bill, not only do the Republicans claim there is nothing, absolutely nothing, to cut in the defense budget, they are actually increasing spending beyond what the Pentagon is asking for. The Republicans have put an additional $75 million for missile defense in this bill--75 million additional dollars that the generals have not asked for.

So my amendment today is simple: It would reduce funding for the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense program by $75 million to bring the 2013 funding level back to the administration's request.

Ground-Based Midcourse Defense is Star Wars, and it's a system that hopes to one day shoot down an incoming nuclear warhead by launching our own missiles from Alaska and California.

But here we have a situation where basically the Republicans are saying that they want to give the Pentagon $75 million more than what the military says it needs right now. And if we can't decide just to take what the Pentagon is asking and rubber stamp it and give it to them, and even that is not enough in a period of fiscal austerity, then how in the world are we going to be successful next year when $55 billion has to be cut?

So, let's start here. St. Augustine's prayer, I think, is applicable here, where he said, O Lord, make me chaste, but not just yet. The Republicans are saying, O Lord, let us reduce the deficit, but not just yet. When it comes to defense spending, we want to give the Pentagon even more than they are asking for. Let's get all of our sinning done before next January. Let's really clear the deck on all the gold-plated planning that--I don't know if it's defense firms because it's not the Pentagon. The Pentagon is saying that the money that's in the bill as the President proposed it is sufficient in order to provide for the development of this missile defense technology.

The bill already funds this program to the tune of $900 million, and the Pentagon is saying ``enough.'' So I know you're talking about canceling sequestration when it comes to defense spending, but this isn't a good sign. This isn't a good sign that we're ever going to be able to reconcile the tension that exists between the need not to cut NIH funding, the need not to cut National Cancer Institute funding, the need not to cut programs that deal with Grandma on Medicaid and nursing homes and all the way down the line. This just goes beyond anything that's even remotely reasonable.

I urge an ``aye'' vote on the Markey amendment, and I hope that it is adopted by the full House.

I yield back the balance of his time.

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Mr. MARKEY. Our current nuclear arsenal has significant overkill that is built into it. Our country continues to spend more and more taxpayer money on nuclear weapons even though the President and the Senate have already agreed to reduce the number of deployed nuclear weapons, and even though there is a growing bipartisan consensus that the United States has an excessive number of nuclear weapons and that the United States spends far more than it needs to for a nuclear deterrent and defense.

That is why I rise today to offer my amendment: to reduce the number of deployed intercontinental ballistic nuclear missiles from 450 to 300.

I believe that this is the soundest approach to both our national security and our economic security needs. Each of our land-based nuclear missiles costs us--and this is an incredible number--$2.4 million every year to operate and to maintain. My amendment would save the taxpayers about $360 million next year and every year after that.

It's not just arms control groups that support this departure from Cold War thinking. It also includes General James Cartwright, who until last year was the commander of the United States' nuclear forces. General Cartwright published a report in May that concluded that zero intercontinental ballistic missiles are necessary for our nuclear deterrent or defense. The former commander of U.S. nuclear forces doesn't think we need ICBMs at all.

So reducing the number from 450 to 300 still leaves more than enough missiles for an effective nuclear deterrent. That's still more than enough missiles to annihilate any of our enemies over and over. It not only will turn our enemies into rubble, but it will make that rubble bounce and bounce and bounce again. That's how many nuclear weapons we would still have in reserve.

That is a real savings, and that savings can be used for the NIH budget. The entire budget to find the cure for Alzheimer's--5 million Americans have it--is $450 million a year. If we would just cut out these ICBMs--and that leaves plenty left over--it would give us enough money to almost double the budget to find a cure for something that really is going to kill Americans, that really does terrify them in their homes.

So I pray that the House will accept this amendment and send us in the correct direction in which we should be heading in terms of really protecting the American public.

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Mr. MARKEY. I just want to note here that the gentleman from Washington State did pioneering work in the 1980s in identifying the vulnerability of the land-based ICBM fleet. That discussion continues even today out here on the House floor.

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