Joe Biden

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Does the Senator from Delaware have any time remaining?

Mr. BIDEN. I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished Senator from Connecticut.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I yield to the Senator from New York 1 minute.

Mr. BIDEN. I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.

Mr. BIDEN. Further parliamentary inquiry: At the end of the Congress, what would then happen to the treaty?

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I want to inform my colleagues on this side--I apologize for it--the most I can give any colleague is 2 minutes. I yield 2 minutes to the Senator from Michigan.

Mr. BIDEN. If when the vote occurs on the Resolution of Ratification it does not achieve 67 votes, what happens to the treaty?

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I yield 2 minutes to my friend from Minnesota.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I yield 2 minutes to the Senator from Iowa.

Mr. BIDEN. I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished Senator from Vermont.

Mr. BIDEN. After consultation with the chairman of the committee, they are going to reserve the remainder of their time so we will not go back and forth with proponents and opponents until they indicate they want to. I yield 2 minutes to the Senator from Pennsylvania.

Mr. BIDEN. How much time remains in control of my friend?

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished Senator from Rhode Island.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, how much time remains in my control?

Mr. BIDEN. Surely.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I have spoken to our leader. I am going to close the debate on our side. I will use any time up to the amount of time that I have available. My friend from North Carolina knows--I guess when people listen to us on the air they must wonder. We go through this, ``my friend from North Carolina'' and ``distinguished Senator from.'' I imagine people, especially kids or youngsters in high school and college, must look at us and say: What are they talking about, unless they understand the need for good manners in a place where there are such strong differences, where we have such deep-seated differences on some issues, where I must tell you--and I am not being melodramatic--my heart aches because we are about to vote down this treaty. I truly think, I honestly believe that, in the 27 years I have been here, this is the most serious mistake the Senate has ever made--or is about to make. But that does not detract from my respect for the Senator from North Carolina, who not only is against the treaty, but wants to bring it up now, now, and vote it down. So I think it is important for the American people to understand. We have deep differences on this floor. In other places they have coups and they shoot each other. Because of the traditions of this body and the rules of the Senate, we live to fight another day. My friend knows we came the same year; we came the same date; we came at the same time. I will promise him, and he will not be surprised, I will use every remaining day of this Congress to try to fight him on this issue--even though I am about to lose, we are about to lose, my position is about to lose--to try to bring this back up, try to push it, try to keep it alive. Because as the Parliamentarian pointed out, when you vote this treaty down today, it doesn't die; it goes to sleep. It goes back to bed. It jumps over that marble counter there, back over the desk to the Executive Calendar to be called up again. I warn you all, I am going to be a thorn in your side, not that it matters much, but I am going to keep harping at it. I am going to keep beating up on you; I am going to keep talking about it; I am going to keep at it, keep at it, keep at it. When we started this off, my objective was to get the kind of hearings--I know my friend says we have had hearings--the kind of hearings we have had on other significant treaties--10, 12, 15, 18 days of hearings. The ``sense of the Senate'' amendment that I was prepared to introduce two weeks ago called for Foreign Relations Committee hearings beginning this fall and final action by March 31, 2000. That is what I was looking for because I truly believe that, were the American people and our colleagues able to hash this out in the way we designed this body to work, we would, in fact, find accommodation for all those concerns that 67 Senators might have; not 90, but probably 67, 68--70. I truly believe that. I truly believe that. Instead, we got one quick week of hearings, with the Committee on Foreign Relations holding only one day of hearings dedicated to this treaty, the day after the committee was discharged of its responsibility. That abdication of committee responsibility was perhaps only fitting, as most Republicans appear prepared to force this great country to abdicate its responsibility for world leadership on nuclear non- proliferation. But let me say that in this floor debate, I have attempted at least to answer attacks leveled by treaty opponents. Neither side has been able to delve very deeply, however, given the time constraints and lack of balanced, I think, detailed knowledge on the part of our Senate. For example, the distinguished Senator from Rhode Island and the Senator from Virginia are both friends. They are World War II vets. They have served a long time and they are among the two most honorable people I know. Senator Chafee--I assume he will forgive me for saying this--came up to me and said: Joe, check what I have here. Is this accurate, what I have here? I said what I am about to say: It is absolutely accurate. He said: But it is different from what my friend from Virginia said, Senator Warner said. I said: I love him, but he is flat wrong. He is flat wrong. I don't think anybody is intentionally misleading anybody. I do think we haven't hashed this out. For example, there is a condition that we have adopted by unanimous consent, part of this resolution of ratification we are about to vote on, the last section of which says: Withdrawal from the treaty: If the President determines that nuclear testing is necessary to assure with a high degree of confidence the safety and reliability of the United States nuclear weapons stockpile, the President shall consult promptly with the Senate and withdraw from the treaty. He has no choice. He must withdraw. My friend from Virginia characterizes this treaty as having no way out. If, however, the President is told by the National Laboratory Directors, by the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Energy, ``We can't guarantee any more, boss,'' he must inform us and he must withdraw. That is an illustration of what I mean. Here are two honorable men, two men of significant experience, asking one another and asking each of their staffs: Which is right? In one sense, it is clear what is right: we haven't had much time to talk about it. We haven't had much time to talk about it. The debating points and counterpoints are too many to summarize in a short statement in the probably 12 minutes I have left. But the themes of this debate are clear and so are the fallacies that underlie the arguments of those who oppose the treaty, at least the arguments made most repeatedly on the floor. The first theme of the treaty opponents is that, while our nuclear weapons stockpile may be--they don't say ``may'', they say ``is''--safe and is reliable today, there is no way to do without nuclear testing forever. That is the first theme that is promoted by the opponents. This argument is based on a fallacy rooted in our nuclear weapons history. The history is that our nuclear testing has supported a trial- and-error approach to correcting deficiencies, rather than rooting our weapons in detailed scientific knowledge of how a nuclear reaction works. The fallacy is that nuclear weapons must be subjected to full-up, ``integrated'' testing. That is a fallacy. The truth is, rarely do we fully test major systems. Rather, we test components or conduct less than full tests of complete systems. As my colleagues know, a truly full test of a nuclear weapon would require that it be tested as a bomb or as a warhead, as it is intended to be, and exploded in the atmosphere. All the experts tell you that. That is the only true, absolute way you know what is going to happen: test it in the atmosphere. As the Presiding Officer knows, we have done without atmospheric testing for 36 years. We accepted the supposedly degraded confidence in our nuclear stockpile that results from this lack of full-blown testing. Why have we accepted that? Because we balanced the benefits of full- up atmospheric testing against its disadvantages, and it was clear that the benefits outweighed the negatives. When listing the benefits, we also noted how well we could assure the systems performance without these full-up tests. When listing the disadvantages, we included cost, risk of collateral damage, environmental risk, radioactive fallout, and the diplomatic or military costs that would have been incurred if we had rejected or withdrawn from the Limited Test-Ban Treaty which was signed in 1963. Similarly today, we have to consider both the benefits and the disadvantages of insisting upon the right to conduct underground nuclear testing. We should include in our calculus the fact that the Resolution of Ratification of this treaty requires the President to withdraw from the treaty if he ``determines that nuclear testing is necessary to assure, with a high degree of confidence, the safety and reliability of the United States nuclear weapons stockpile.'' Guess what? Every year now, under the law, the Secretary of Energy and the Secretary of Defense must not only go to the President, but must come to the Senator from Nebraska, the Senator from Delaware, the Foreign Relations Committee, the Armed Services Committee, and they must tell us, as well as the President, whether they can certify the continued safety and reliability of the stockpile. If they cannot certify, and if we adopt this Resolution of Ratification, the President has to withdraw from the treaty. We will likely differ in our calculations of the balance between advantages and disadvantages of foreswearing underground nuclear testing. But we should all reject the fallacy that there is no substitute for continuing what we did in the past. The second theme that opponents of the treaty keep putting out is that we have to reject this treaty because it is not perfectly verifiable. This argument is based upon a fallacy rooted in slogans and fear. The fear relates to the history of arms control violations by the Russians and the Soviet Union. The slogans are Ronald Reagan's election-year demand: Effective verification. And his later catch phrase: Trust but verify. This body has never demanded perfect verification. Consider the vote we had on the INF Treaty that eliminated land-based intermediate-range missiles. That treaty was signed by President Reagan. President Reagan, the same man who signed the treaty, also coined the phrase ``trust but verify.'' Was the INF Treaty perfectly verifiable? No. Nobody in the world suggested it was perfectly verifiable. Listen to what the Senate Intelligence Committee said before we voted on Ronald Reagan's INF Treaty. They said: Soviet compliance with some of the treaty's provisions will be difficult to monitor. The problem is exemplified by the unresolved controversy between the Defense Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies over the number of SS-20s in the Soviet inventory. We did not even know how many SS-20s, intermediate-range missiles, they had. The Intelligence Committee went on to say: Ground-launched cruise missiles pose a particular difficult monitoring problem as they are interchangeable long-range, sea-based launch cruise missiles. Which the INF Treaty did not ban. This was not verifiable. Where were all you guys and women when the Reagan treaty was up here? God love him: Trust but verify. I challenge anyone to come to the floor in the remaining minutes and tell me that the INF Treaty was perfectly verifiable. I love this double standard. You wonder why some of us on this side of the aisle think this is about politics. The fallacy is clear: Nobody really believes in perfect verification. The Senate approved Ronald Reagan's INF Treaty by a vote of 93-5, despite the fact that we knew the INF Treaty was far from verifiable. The legitimate verification questions are how well can we verify compliance and whether our national security will be threatened by any undetected cheating that could occur. I say to my colleagues, we should end the pretense that only a perfectly verifiable treaty is acceptable. The only perfectly verifiable treaty is one that is impossible to be written. Each side in this debate has agreed that the approval or rejection of this treaty could have serious consequences. I suggest that we pay some attention to each side's worst-case scenarios. Opponents of the treaty have warned that a permanent ban on nuclear weapons tests could result in degraded confidence in the U.S. deterrent, perhaps leading other countries to develop their own nuclear weapons. Treaty supporters have warned that rejection of this treaty could lead to a more unstable world in which all countries were freed of any obligation to obey the Test-Ban Treaty. Neither of these worst-case outcomes is very palatable. Any degraded foreign confidence in the U.S. deterrent would be limited, however, either by annual certification of our own high confidence in our nuclear weapons, or by prompt action to fix any problems--including mandatory withdrawal from this treaty if the President determined that testing was necessary. Rejection of this treaty would not greatly increase the speed with which a nuclear test could be conducted, if one were necessary. The nuclear stockpile certification process already forces an annual decision on whether to resume testing, and the treaty would impost only a six-month delay after notice of our intent to withdraw. That means a total lag of 6 to 18 months between discovering a problem and being free to test--roughly what officials say is the minimum time that it takes to mount a serious nuclear weapons test, anyway. By contrast, however, the worst-case scenario of Treaty supporters might not be so limited. As Larry Eagleburger, who served as Secretary of State at the end of the Bush Administration, wrote in Monday's Washington Times: The all-important effort of the United States to stem the spread of nuclear weapons around the world is about to go over a cliff unless saner heads in Washington quickly prevail. Eighty years ago, this body rejected the Treaty of Versailles that ended the First World War. Woodrow Wilson's vision of a League of Nations to keep the peace was turned down by a Senate that did not want to accept such a U.S. responsibility in the world. While that vote was understood to be significant at the time, nobody could foresee that our refusal to take an active role in Europe's affairs would help lead to a Second World War only two decades later. Today, eight years after the Cold War's end, the Senate is presented with a different kind of collective security proposition--an international treaty that can meaningfully reduce the danger that nuclear weapons will spread, a treaty enforced by an army of inspectors and a global system of sensors. We cannot tell what the precise consequences of our actions are going to be this time, but the world will surely watch and wonder if we once again abdicate America's responsibility of world leadership, if we once again allow the world to drift rudderless into the stormy seas of nuclear proliferation. World War II was a time of horror and heroism. A world of nuclear wars will bring unimagined horror and little room for the heroism of our fathers. We all pray that our children and grandchildren will not live in such a world. Will the votes today have such a major, perhaps awful, consequence? We cannot say for sure, but I end by suggesting to all that the chance being taken by those who are worried about our ability to verify compliance and our ability to verify the stockpile is far outweighed by the chance we take in rejecting this treaty and saying to the entire world: We are going to do testing and we do not believe that you can maintain your interests without testing, so have at it. We should all consider that this may be a major turning point in world affairs. If we should reject this treaty, we may later find that ``the road not taken,'' in Robert Frost's famous phrase, was, in fact, the last road back from the nuclear brink. I heard, in closing--the last comment I will make--my friend say: Our allies will lose confidence in us if we ratify this treaty. The fact is, however, that Tony Blair called today and, to paraphrase, said: For God's sake, don't defeat this treaty. He is the Prime Minister of England, our No. 1 ally. The German Chancellor said: Please ratify, in an open letter. The President of France, Jacques Chirac, said: Please ratify. So said our allies. Larry Eagleburger's conclusion is one with which I shall end. His conclusion was: The whole point of the CTBT from the American perspective is get other nations to stop their testing activities and thereby lock-in--in perpetuity--the overwhelming U.S. advantage in weaponry. There is no other way to interpret a vote against this treaty than as a vote in favor of nuclear testing of other nations. It would stand on its head the model of U.S. leadership on nonproliferation matters we have achieved for over 40 years. If the Senate cannot bring itself to do the right thing and approve the treaty, then senators should do the next best thing and pull it off the table. As I used to say in a former profession, I rest my case, but in my former profession, when I rested my case, I assumed I would win. I know I am going to lose here, but I will be back. I will be back. I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of time, if I have any.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I rise today to honor the lifetime achievements of a man with truly a lifetime of achievements. Russell W. Peterson served as Governor of Delaware from 1968-1972, restoring peace on the streets of Delaware's largest city in the wake of the tumultuous 1968 summer riots--as he overcame decades of resistance to implement a sweeping overhaul of State government. Russ Peterson is known to Delawareans as the father of the state's landmark Coastal Zone Act, just as he is renowned nationally as one of our country's leading environmentalists. I will go into more detail of his many accomplishments, however, the reason I pay tribute to him today is for his recognition--not only as a statesman, environmentalist and civil rights leader--but as a grandfather! Delaware's Creative Grandparenting, Inc. has awarded Russell W. Peterson its first-ever ``Lifetime Achievement Award.'' Peterson, a grandfather of 17 and father of four, deserves every accolade bestowed upon him. When Russ Peterson was elected Governor of Delaware in 1968, the National Guard patrolled the streets of Wilmington. As he promised, the day Peterson was sworn in as Governor, the National Guard was pulled from the streets. As a 27-year-old New Castle County Councilman first elected that same year in 1968, I assure you Governor Peterson's leadership and steady stewardship made a lasting impression upon me. I am proud to call him a friend. As Governor, he bucked resistance and reformed Delaware's arcane Commission form of Government into a Cabinet form of government. He convinced the General Assembly to streamline 112 Commissions into ten department leaders. It was nothing short of a revolution! His greatest accomplishment came in June, 1972, when he single- handedly pushed through the landmark Coastal Zone Act, which forever prohibits development along Delaware's precious coastal zone. Yes, he's the man who proclaimed ``to hell with Shell,'' as he fought efforts by oil refineries to further develop on the Delaware River. The Coastal Zone Act shall forever stand as a monument to Russ Peterson in my State. Governor Peterson also signed Delaware's Fair Housing Act into law and appointed the first female to the Delaware bench--Family Court Judge Roxana C. Arsht. And in July, 1972, he signed into law a major revision of the Delaware Code, which is important for what was not included. The Whipping Post! From 1669-1952, more than 1,600 men were flogged at the whipping post. Delaware was the last State to eliminate this barbaric punishment, thanks to Russ Peterson. After leaving office in 1972, Russ served as an advisor to Presidents and held numerous prestigious environmental positions. He was named Vice-Chair of Governor Nelson Rockfeller's National Commission on Critical Choices of America. Then, he chaired President Ford's Council on Environmental Quality. In 1976, Peterson became President of New Directions, a world-wide citizens' lobby group. In 1978, he was tapped to be the director of the congressional Office of Technological Assessment. He secured his worldwide reputation as an environmentalist as the President of the National Audubon Society. Mr. President, I consider myself very fortunate to call him a friend. I am honored that just last week, Governor Peterson took the time to write me a handwritten note to say he was ``proud that you are my Senator.'' That sort of praise from such an accomplished man is humbling. Russ Peterson, my friend, you have a lot of living yet to do and more accomplishments yet to come. Today, though, we honor your lifetime of achievements.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. Yes, I would be happy to yield.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I see my friend from the great State of Montana is up to speak. I ask the chairman of the----

Mr. BIDEN. In response to my friend from Pennsylvania, I will say that I, obviously, cannot speak for the President. But he has gone awfully far. He says: ``I believe that proceeding to a vote under these circumstances would severely harm the national security of the United States, damage our relationship with our allies, and undermine our historic leadership,'' et cetera. ``Accordingly, I request that you postpone consideration of [this] Test Ban Treaty on the Senate floor.'' Unless there is something incredible that is likely to happen in the next 8 months, the President is not going to be--and I realize this is a legitimate worry on the part of some; that the President will wait until the middle of an election year and raise a political issue by forcing people to vote for or against this treaty--but the likelihood of changing the votes of 22 Republican Senators between now and the election is zero, I would respectfully suggest. So what the President has done here is done the only thing I think a chief executive--Democrat or Republican--should do; that is, he did just as Jimmy Carter did when he asked for SALT II to be taken down. He did not make a commitment he would not try to have it brought up. That is not what his letter said. What he said is: Bring it down. Don't vote on it now. It is not in the national interest. To have a President of the United States say, the treaty I, in fact, negotiated--I want to go on record as saying you should not consider it at all during the remainder of my term in office, surely damages his ability to deal internationally. So I think he is observing the reality of the circumstance, which means that there will be no vote next year on the floor of the Senate-- for if that were the case, you might as well go ahead and have the vote now. The letter Jimmy Carter sent--and I shall read it--said: In light of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, I request that you delay consideration of the SALT II Treaty on the Senate floor. The purpose of this request is not to withdraw the Treaty from consideration, but to defer the debate so that the Congress and I as President can assess Soviet actions and intentions, and devote our primary attention to the legislative and other measures required to respond to the crisis. As you know, I continue to share your view that the SALT II Treaty is in the national security interest of the United States and the entire world, and that it should be taken up by the Senate as soon as these more urgent issues have been addressed. Sincerely, Jimmy Carter. This letter of the President of the United States--this President-- goes a lot further than President Carter went in pulling down SALT II. But for the President to go beyond that, it seems to me, is to be beyond what we should be asking any executive. The Senator from Virginia has worked mightily to try to resolve this. He has gone so far as to draft a letter which a number of Senators are likely to sign, if they have not already signed, saying: In addition to the President asking this be brought down, we the undersigned Senators ask that it be brought down. And we have no intention of bringing that treaty up next year. We do not think the treaty should be brought up in the election year. To make the President, from an institutional standpoint, guarantee that he is now against the treaty that he ratified, it seems to me, is to be going beyond institutional good taste.

Mr. BIDEN. The Senator is very nice to say that. Seldom procedurally. I yield the floor.

Mr. BIDEN. Madam President, I won't take the time.

Mr. BIDEN. I will try to respond briefly. No. 1, to suggest our actions would affect the international community should not be taken in the context and consideration of what is happening in the international community is naive in the extreme. It is not suggesting anyone should dictate what we should or should not do. It is suggesting that it makes sense to take into consideration what is happening around the world and what appropriate or inappropriate conclusion from our action will be drawn by other countries. We have always done that in our undertakings around the world. It is just responsible stewardship of our national security. The suggestion was not that because there is a coup, failure to ratify this treaty, turning it down or ratifying it would have affected that coup. That is not the issue. The issue is there is a struggle today within Pakistan, evidenced by the coup, as there was within India, as evidenced by their recent elections, about what they should do with their nuclear capacity, whether they should test further, enhance it, and deploy it, or whether or not they should refrain from testing and sign the treaty. The only point I am making is that our actions will impact upon that debate within those countries. The debate happens to be taking place in the context of a military coup right now in Pakistan. It took place in the context of an election where the BJP won and made significant gains in India just last week, but it does impact upon that. We lose any leverage we have to impose upon Pakistan, which still wants to deal with us, still relies upon us or interfaces with us in a number of areas in terms of food, trade, and aid all the way through to military relationships. It does make a difference if we are able to say to them, I posit: We want you to refrain from testing and sign on to this treaty if, in fact, we have done it. If we say: We want you to refrain from testing and sign on to the treaty, but by the way, we already have 6,000 of these little things and we are going to test ourselves, it makes it very difficult to make that case. Lastly, I say with regard to Pakistan, it is not so much what anyone will be able to prove; it will be what will be asserted. We all know in politics what is asserted is sometimes more important than what is provable. It should not be, but it is. It does have ramifications domestically and internationally, I suggest. Also, with regard to this issue of the preferred versus the only method by which we can guarantee the reliability of our stockpile, nobody, including the present lab Directors, suggests that our present stockpile is, in fact, unreliable or not safe. We have not tested since 1992. The issue is, and my colleague knows this, the intersection--and it is clear if we do not test, if we do nothing to the stockpile, it will over time degrade, just like my friend and I as we approach our older years, as a matter of medical fact, our memories fade. It is a medical fact. To suggest that because our memories fade we should not listen to someone on the floor who is 8 years older than someone else would be viewed by everyone as mildly preposterous because when that older person was younger, their memory may have been so far superior to the person who is younger now that they still have a better memory. It does not make a point. It is a distinction without a difference. It is the same way with regard to our stockpile degrading. At what point does the degradation occur that it is no longer reliable? I asked that of Secretary Schlesinger. He said he thinks we are down from 99 percent to about 85 percent now, and he thinks there is no worry at that 85-percent level. But what he worries about, and then he held up a little graph and the graph showed based on years and amount of reliability this curve going down like this, at the same time there was a dotted line showing the Stockpile Stewardship Program and how that mirrored that ability to intersect with where we would intersect our confidence that our Stockpile Stewardship Program would be able to assure that the stockpile was reliable. It comes around where the shelf life of these weapons occur about 10 years out. Everyone has said that between now and then, the overwhelming body of opinion is, from the Jason Group to other leading scientists, including these 32 Nobel laureates in physics, the Stockpile Stewardship Program is working now and will if we make the commitment to intersect at a point where the shelf life begins to change where it continues to guarantee. We are never going to be in that line where it is so degraded that any lab Director will have to say: Mr. President, I cannot certify anymore. But as a fail safe, no pun intended, for that possibility--that is why the amendment was just adopted--the amendment says in the last paragraph, if that happens and a lab Director tells the President that has happened and it cannot certify in terms of reliability, the President must get out of the treaty. It is true; we are stringing together a lot of true statements that are not particularly relevant to the question, and the question is: Is our stockpile now reliable and safe? Is it a deterrent still? Do other people believe it? Is it a deterrent so that our allies believe it and they do not go nuclear, such as Japan and Germany? And is it a deterrent so that our potential enemies, such as China and Russia and others, believe it so they will not try to do anything that will jeopardize our security? That is the second question. The third question is: Are we able to verify this? My answer to all three of those questions is, yes, yes, yes. And the answer of the overwhelming body of opinion is yes, yes, yes. But just in case it is no, the President has to get out. He has to get out. We just adopted a condition, so he has to get out. By the way, I listened to people being quoted, like Edward Teller. God love him. I had the great honor of debating him around the country on four setup debates. It was intimidating because he would stand there with those bushy eyelashes and say: My young friend from Delaware does not know--here is the guy who invented the hydrogen bomb. What am I going to say? Yeah, right? I would listen to him, and he would even get me thinking he was right for a while. Then I would listen to what he said. Last night, I watched a documentary that is 7 or 8--actually, it is older than that; it was President Reagan's last year--on the Star Wars notion. Dr. Teller was sitting there, a very distinguished man, saying things like--and I will get the exact quote for the Record tomorrow--but he said things like: We must act now because the Russians are on the verge of having a missile defense capability. On the verge; they were on the verge of collapsing. He is never right about his predictions, so far. But he did invent the hydrogen bomb. That is a big deal. I cannot argue with that. As my mother would say, just because you can do one thing well does not mean you can do everything well. If I need to blow somebody up, I want him with me. If I need somebody to predict to me what is going to happen in terms of our interest, of our adversaries, or us, he ``ain't'' the guy I am going to because he has not been right. Here we are, we are going to do this weight of authority--we all learned, and, again, I am not kidding when I say this. Senator Kyl is not only a first-rate lawyer, he has a first-rate mind. We both went to undergraduate school and took courses in logic. We learned about the 13 logical falacies. We engage in them all the time. One is the appeal of authority. I will take my authority and trump your authority. I have 32 Nobel laureates. Are you going to raise me with six Secretaries of Defense? I have four of the last five Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with what are you going to raise me? This is crazy. What is true is that it is better to test if you want to know for certain whether weapons are reliable. I hope if I acknowledge that, he will acknowledge it is better not to test on one area: If you want to discourage others from testing. Just discourage. He does not have to agree that it would do everything, just discourage. It is better not to test. If you tell your kid he cannot smoke and you are standing there smoking and saying: By the way, you can't smoke, it kind of undermines your credibility. On the other hand, if you do not smoke--like I don't--and say to your kid, you can't smoke, they may smoke anyway; but one thing is for certain: If you are smoking--as my friend who is presiding would say in a different context--you might lose your moral authority to make the case. I think we lose our moral authority to make the case internationally when we say: By the way, we are unquestionably the most powerful nuclear nation in the history of the world, and in relative terms we are far in excess of anyone else, including the former Soviets--now the Russians--that the Chinese are not, as they say where I come from, a ``patch on our trousers,'' that the Libyans and others may be able to get themselves a Hiroshima bomb, but they are going to have to carry it in a suitcase--it ``ain't'' close. But I tell you what: Because we worry about our reliability--even though we are going to spend $45 billion, even though we have the best scientists in the world, the best scientists that we can attract from other parts of the world--we know we can put up a shield around America that can stop 10, 20, 100, 1,000 hydrogen bombs from dropping on the United States--but we believe that we have to test our nuclear weapons now or be able to test them in the near term in order to be able to assure that we are safe and secure and that you believe we are credible. I will end where I began this debate a long time ago. When the Senator from New Hampshire and I were college kids, you used to ride along--he was heading off to Vietnam--and there used to be a bumper sticker which said: One hydrogen bomb can ruin your day. It just takes one. One hydrogen bomb can ruin your day. We are not talking about one hydrogen bomb. No one is doubting that 1,000 people and 15 nations in the world can develop not a hydrogen bomb but a nuclear bomb like the one dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. No doubt about that. This is not going to stop that. This isn't going to guarantee that because you do not, everyone has to test that. They can do that without testing. We dropped it without testing it. The second one we did not test. So they can test; they cannot test. But, folks, this is high-stakes poker. All I am saying to you is, you take the worst case scenario my friends lay out, that we have the stockpile, but we cannot guarantee it, and we cannot detect testing, and we have an escape clause--you get out of it because the treaty is not working. That is their worst case scenario. The escape clause is we have to get out because it says we must get out. Let me tell you my worst case scenario. My worst case scenario is we, in fact, do not sign this treaty, and the Chinese decide all moral restraints are off--even though they are not particularly a moral country--we can now, with impunity, go and test and not be buffeted by world opinion in terms of affecting our trade or our commerce and the rest. We can go from 16, 18, 20--however many intercontinental ballistic missiles they have--we can now test to build lighter, smaller ones with that information we stole from the laboratories. We can now MIRV our missiles. The Pakistanis and the Indians agree that: Look, what we have to do is now deploy nuclear weapons because the restraints are off. I do not know what we do with that worst case scenario. There is nothing the President can say, such as: By the way, stop. Out. I want to pull out. You all can't do that. China, you can't do that. There is no way out of that one. This is not like us making the mistake on a tax bill. This is not like us making a mistake on a piece of welfare or social legislation. We can correct that in a day. I have been here when we passed reforms on health care that within 6 months we repealed because we thought it was a mistake. You cannot legislate on this floor of the Senate a course of action that the world is engaged in, a road that has been been taken down away from nonproliferation to proliferation by a piece of legislation. I cannot guarantee the Presiding Officer that if this passes there will not be more proliferation of nuclear weapons. But I am prepared to bet you anything, if we reject this treaty, there will be significantly more proliferation of nuclear capability than there was before because there would be no restraint whatsoever on the one thing every nation has to do to become a nuclear power that is not already a significant nuclear power--and that is to test. I yield the floor. Mr. KYL addressed the Chair.

Mr. BIDEN. Madam President, I want to print in the Record, without taking the time from the Senator from New Hampshire, some other quotes from Dr. Robinson from his testimony on October 7, 1999. I ask unanimous consent they be printed in the Record.

Mr. BIDEN

Mr. BIDEN. They seem to work.