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Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I want to take a moment or two to respond to something that was said earlier in morning business when the Senator from North Dakota gave his usual eloquent discourse on populism, and the fact that he used phrases that Republican s have a philosophy where the rich are paid too little and the poor are paid too much. That was in reference to a budget that will eliminate the deficit by the year 2002.

It is always difficult to stand on the floor and defend an effort to really do something about the deficit because those individuals who want to continue the social programs, who want to continue business as usual, will stand up and make it look as if tho se of us who are trying to be fiscally responsible, those of us who recognize that it is not any of us in this Chamber but future generations that are going to have to pay for all of this fun we are having right now, that somehow we are not acting respons ibly. I think the elections of November 8, 1994, were very clear warning signals that we are going to change, we are not going to have business as usual in America.

But the thing that disturbed me more than anything else that was said by the distinguished Senator from North Dakota [Mr. Dorgan], was the reference to a national defense system, national missile defense system, star wars. This is the first warning sign that I have heard in this cycle that we are going to have in fact opposition, people wanting to make it look like those of us who want to have a national missile defense system, somehow we are looking up in the stars in a Buck Rogers kind of syndrom e, that it is something that is very expensive and something we cannot have.

I would like to suggest, Mr. President, that we have an opportunity to prepare now to defend ourselves against a future national missile attack. It was not long ago that Jim Woolsey, who was the chief security adviser to the President of the United States , President Clinton, made the observation that our intelligence informs us that there are between 20 and 25 countries that either have or are developing weapons of mass destruction--either nuclear, chemical, or biological--and are developing the missile, the means of delivering those warheads.

This is a very frightening thing, when we stop and realize that we in America do not have a missile defense system. Most people think we do have it somehow, but we do not.

Many of us can remember what happened back in 1972 when the ABM Treaty was agreed to, that back in 1972 it was a treaty predicated on the assumption that there were two superpowers in the world, the Soviet Union and the United States. I suggest, M r. President, that there are many of us who believe that the threat out there to the United States security could be greater now than it was back then because at least then we could identify who the enemy was. And now, as Jim Woolsey said, there is a prol iferation, a number of countries that have this technology, and many countries that have already demonstrated they are not friends of United States are getting a missile system to deliver warheads.

So I believe that we must be very cautious and not use the normal populace, partisan patter that you hear around this Chamber so much when people start talking about star wars. It is not star wars. We have an ability--and we demonstrated that we are going to use the current Aegis system that we have a $50 billion investment in--to have a high-tier missile defense system that we will be desperately needing in the very near system.

So I hope my colleagues will refrain from taking political advantage of the situation we are in by not saying exactly what it is, and that is that there is a threat out there and the United States of America does not have a national missile defense system .

I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.