Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2014

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. POLIS. Mr. Chairman, as Members of Congress, one of our greatest responsibilities is to keep our country safe and invest our resources wisely, especially when it comes to securing the safety of our country.

The Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) program is a missile system that is supposed to be designed to deflect missiles from rogue states like Iran and North Korea. That would be great if it worked. It is a system with a long history of failure, and military leaders have expressed doubts for years about the viability of this program.

I encourage my colleagues to support my amendment, which would return the funding level for the GMD program back to the Pentagon's own request level in the fiscal year 2014 Defense appropriations bill. Specifically, my amendment cuts funding for the GMD missiles by $107 million and applies those savings to deficit reduction.

Lacking a single successful test intercept since December 2008, the GMD program is simply a failure so far. These repeated failures unfortunately have not stopped us from continuing to authorize over $1 billion for the GMD program to purchase 14 additional missiles on top of the 30 we already have in the NDAA Act of 2013.

The Government Accountability Office has noted that the testing of the system to date has been insufficient to verify that it will function as intended, and there was a most recent test failure on July 5 which supports that assessment from the GAO.

Americans want a missile defense system we can count on. We need to ensure that our missile defenses are tested and are actually capable of keeping our families safe and don't merely provide the illusion of safety. Before we continue to build an arsenal, we should make sure that it works, as custodians of taxpayer funds.

Now, of course, those on the other side will argue that we need to make sure that in an ever more dangerous world we need to have and invest in the missile defenses to protect against the threats from Iran and North Korea. Of course, I agree. The issue is whether this works or not and whether we should reward failure as a Congress and as a country, or whether we should invest in success.

I believe, Mr. Chairman, we should invest in success and not reward failure. We need to be candid about the challenges we face. Deterring threats and encouraging diplomacy is crucial to keeping America safe. Our national security, the safety of Americans is too important to rely on programs that have failed test after test when we need to have confidence that when we need them, they will work.

If we are serious about cutting wasteful spending here in Congress, we need to be willing to take a close look at programs like the GMD and find ways to trim spending and increase our national security. We can do this by building a leaner, more agile, more affordable military that is suited to the 21st century, while being diligent in ensuring that our existing systems can keep us safe and operate as they are intended to.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. POLIS. To be clear, Mr. Chairman, this amendment saves taxpayer money and actually reduces the deficit by over $100 million.

I will be happy to yield 1 1/2 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Visclosky).

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. POLIS. I thank the gentleman.

It is just simple business sense. It doesn't save money to preorder something that you don't know works. You don't do that in business. We as a country shouldn't do it.

This is not a theoretical discussion about advance purchasing or economies of scale. When things work there's a legitimate discussion about that. It is absolutely foolish--foolish--to throw good taxpayer money after bad before our system has proven to work to keep America safe.

I urge my colleagues to adopt this amendment and yield back the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source