National Defense Authorization Act For Fiscal Year 2008

Floor Speech

NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2008 -- (House of Representatives - May 16, 2007)

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Mr. SESSIONS. Madam Chairman, between November 2006 and January 2007, Iran tested its long-range ballistic missile capacities twice.

In July 2006, North Korea also tested a number of its ballistic missiles, including one that has a range of 9,000 miles and could hit parts of the United States of America.

In response to North Korea's test, the United States' Northern Command made nearly a dozen of our anti-ballistic missiles operational, or ready to use, to defend the United States against an imminent danger posed by ballistic missiles.

North Korea's long-range missiles were detected by United States satellites within seconds, and, thankfully, the missile failed after 42 seconds and after only several hundred miles of flight but North Korea and many of our strategic rivals and enemies continue to develop their missile capacities.

Now, it is the time for America's adversaries to understand that America must not have an unwillingness to put its missile defense system on operational alert in the face of imminent threat.

Section 222 of this legislation that we are debating tonight would prevent the missile defense funds authorized by this legislation from being used for operational and support activities.

Specifically, the language in this bill states that the funds provided only be used for the research, development, test and evaluation of our Nation's missile defense system, and it specifically prevents these funds from being used for operational and support activities.

My amendment would clarify that nothing in this legislation would prevent the United States of America from placing our missile defense system on operational alert to respond to an immediate threat to our security posed by enemy ballistic missiles.

If this bill is adopted without my amendment, it would mean that we are telling countries like North Korea that they can take a free shot at the United States of America because we would be unwilling to stand up our current missile defense capacities, exactly the wrong message to send to our enemies.

This makes no strategic sense, and the position of every Member of this body also should be on record saying that. If you want to tie the President's hands in defeating and defending America from ballistic missiles and declare to our enemies our lack of will to defend ourselves against ballistic missile attack, you should oppose this amendment.

But if you believe that Congress should make clear that this legislation should not and would not prevent our defenses from being placed on operational alert to respond to an immediate threat posed by ballistic missiles, you must support this amendment.

I encourage all of my colleagues to provide our military with the clearly stated flexibility that they need to defend our country.

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