Shame, Shame: By One Vote, Minority of Senators Perpetuate America’s Vulnerability to Missile Attack

(Washington, D.C.): Yesterday, forty-one Senators — all Democrats — voted to block a
motion
to permit debate on S. 1873, the American Missile Protection Act of 1998.
This bipartisan
legislation, co-sponsored by Senators Thad Cochran (R-MS) and
Daniel Inouye (D-HI),
would, for the first time in history, make it the policy of the U.S. government “to deploy
effective anti-missile defenses of the territory of the United States as soon as technologically
possible.”⁽¹⁾

As a result of the filibuster led by Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), a majority of
fifty-nine of his
colleagues — every Republican Senator and four respected Democrats, Sens.
Inouye*, Fritz
Hollings* (SC), Joseph Lieberman (CT) href=”#N_2_”>⁽²⁾ and Daniel Akaka (HI) — were denied the
opportunity to debate S. 1873 and, presumably, to have it approved by the Senate. The following
were the forty-one who heeded the urging of the Clinton Administration, ensuring the legislative
sandbagging of this critical bill:

Max S. Baucus (D-MT)
Joseph R. Biden (D-DE)
Jeff Bingaman (D-NM)
Barbara Boxer (D-CA)*
John Breaux (D-LA)*
Richard Bryan (D-NV)
Dale Bumpers (D-AR)
Robert C. Byrd (D-WV)
Max Cleland (D-GA)
Kent Conrad (D-ND)
Thomas A. Daschle (D-SD)*
Christopher J. Dodd (D-CT)*
Byron L. Dorgan (D-ND)*
Richard J. Durbin (D-IL)
Russell D. Feingold (D-WI)*
Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
Wendall H. Ford (D-KY)*
John Glenn (D-OH)
Bob Graham (D-FL)*
Tom Harkin (D-IA)
Tim Johnson (D-SD)
Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA)
Robert Kerrey (D-NE)
John F. Kerry (D-MA)
Herbert Kohl (D-WI)
Mary L. Landrieu (D-LA)
Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT)*
Carl Levin (D-MI)
Barbara A. Mikulski (D-MD)*
Carol Moseley-Braun (D-IL)*
Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY)
Patty Murray (D-WA)*
Jack Reed (D-RI)
Harry Reid (D-NV)*
Charles S. Robb (D-VA)
John D. Rockefeller, IV (D-WV)
Paul S. Sarbanes (D-MD)
Robert Torricelli (D-NJ)
Paul Wellstone (D-MN)
Ron Wyden (D-OR)*

* Senators in bold with an asterix are standing for re-election in 1998.

The arguments made against the Cochran-Inouye legislation ran the gamut from the absurd to
the
ridiculous. For example, some of the same Senators who were willing within the past
fortnight to vote for NATO enlargement — even though Russian officials swore that doing
so would doom the START II Treaty’s chances in the Duma — stridently argued that S.
1873 had to be rejected lest it have that effect. Then there was the argument advanced
by Sen.
Levin that it would be too soon to make a commitment to deploy ballistic missile defenses
because the U.S. intelligence community would be able to provide at least three years warning of
any threat that would necessitate such a deployment. Incredibly, this vote of confidence in the
prescience and infallibility of U.S. intelligence was being heard even as the
Senate was in full cry
over the CIA’s failure to anticipate the Indian nuclear test!

The Bottom Line

Despite this latest setback, yesterday’s Senate action on the American Missile
Protection Act
represents great progress in what might be called the “longest-sought, hardest-fought”
national security issue of the past 15 years: the campaign to end the United States’
vulnerability to missile attack. Not so long ago, only a relative handful of legislators could be
counted upon to vote to defend America. Today there is a clear, strong bipartisan majority in the
Senate for doing so.

It will not escape the notice of the voters in the states of those names bolded above
that
their Senator was the decisive vote. But for his or her adherence to the party line laid
down by
the Clinton Administration and enforced by the Senate’s Democratic Caucus — with the laudable
exception of the four courageous men who broke ranks to put the national interest before that of
their leadership — the Cochran-Inouye bill would be on its way to becoming law. The record is
now clear as to who is responsible for perpetuating America’s vulnerability, an act that cannot be
forgiven and will not be forgotten next November.

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1. For more on the Cochran-Inouye legislation, see
Senate Should Vote to Defend America ‘As
Soon As Technologically Possible’ (No. 98-D 79, 6
May 1998).

2. Sen. Lieberman’s vote was particularly noteworthy insofar as his
position was unclear when
the Senate Armed Services Committee voted 10-7 to recommend the Senate’s adoption of S.
1873 on 24 April 1998.