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THE DEFICIT (Senate - October 25, 1993)

Sen. BUMPERS. Ballistic missile defense. I am not sure that that is a bad idea, but I know that we are spending too much money on research right now. You know, we spent over $30 billion on SDI before we decided we did not need SDI.

So they changed the name of it to BMD, ballistic missile defense, and conjured up all of those rockets being destroyed by Patriot missiles. Who wants to vote against the Patriot when they watched on the evening television as that thing supposedly--you and I know that was terribly embellished about the success rate of that. But everybody saw it, and they were patriotic about it.

The intelligence budget is still out of control. I do not want to give him a figure as to what I think the intelligence budget ought to be, but it is terribly bloated at this moment.

As to the D-5 missile, the Senator heard me say a moment ago we already have bought and paid for more missiles and more warheads for our Trident submarines than we are going to be permitted to use under the START II Treaty, which we must come into compliance with around the year 2000. The Senator knows what will happen--the same thing that happened on the super conductor supercollider. I lost that battle this year. Next year I may lose it again. The next year I may win it. And we would have spent all that money needlessly in the meantime.

I am glad they are not digging a hole for the D-5 because they love to dig holes. Everything has a hole--the Clinch River breeder, the super collider. If they were digging a hole they would be down I do not know how deep right now. We all know we have to go back and fill the hole in.

I already mentioned the other two. These figures are slightly embellished. The figure is more than $450 billion that we could save with those few amendments over the next 35 years.

We never get a chance to vote on the 35-year cost. We vote on that $500 million for next year or that $1.5 billion or $2 billion for next year as though that is just petty cash. We know where it is headed. We know what the ultimate cost is going to be.




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