Center Calls For Senate To Reject ‘Killer Amendment’ On SDI

(Washington, D.C.): The Center for Security Policy today sharply criticized an amendment to the S. 2884, the FY1991 Defense authorization bill, expected to be offered shortly on the Senate floor by Senators Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) and Richard Shelby (D-AL).

In an analysis entitled Showdown on SDI: Senate to Debate the Ultimate ‘Killer Amendment’, the Center urged members of the Senate to reject the Bingaman-Shelby effort to redirect and undermine the vital Strategic Defense Initiative program. It also called on President Bush urgently to announce his intention to veto any legislation containing provisions like those of this amendment which would have the effect of denying the nation and the President the opportunity he has called for — namely to make a decision on deployment of an effective SDI system by 1992.

"The Bingaman-Shelby amendment amounts to an insidious effort to curtail the most promising and important defensive technology of all — space-based interceptors known as ‘Brilliant Pebbles,’ said Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., the Center’s director. "Instead of facilitating the way to the earliest possible deployment of robust, multilayered defenses against ballistic missile attack, the advocates of this proposal are determined to leave the United States vulnerable to it."

The Center believes the effect of this amendment would be threefold:

• It would provide wholly inadequate funding for Brilliant Pebbles — thereby preventing the earliest possible realization and deployment of a robust U.S. defensive system.

 

• It would compel the executive branch instead to pursue a technical, strategic and, ultimately, political dead end — a single-layered, ABM Treaty-limited ground-based interceptor program; and

 

• It would direct unwarranted spending on interesting but long-term and lower priority technologies — amounting to a make-work program for certain national laboratories.

The Center strongly concurs with the sentiments expressed by one of the members of its Board of Advisors, Senator Malcolm Wallop (R-WY) in an op.ed. article published in today’s Wall Street Journal entitled "Congress Forgets the Meaning of Defense." A copy of this excellent critique of the Bingaman-Shelby amendment and other, similarly misguided congressional initiatives is attached.