Shame, Shame Redux: As Clinton Presidency Melts Down, 41 Democrats Continue Filibuster of Bill to Defend America

(Washington, D.C.): For the second time in four months, forty-one Senate Democrats voted
to
prevent debate on a bill that would 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⁾ This legislation — known as “the
American Missile Protection Act of 1998″ (S. 1873)
— is co-sponsored by a majority of the Senate, led by Senators Thad
Cochran (R-MS) and
Daniel Inouye (D-HI). When S.1873’s proponents again fell one vote short of
the sixty votes
needed to halt this filibuster, a harsh reality became clear: Each and every one of those
who
voted to obstruct Senate action on this measure — on both 13 May href=”#N_2_”>⁽²⁾ and during this
morning’s proceedings — must be personally held accountable for leaving America
vulnerable to missile attack.

Dishonor Roll

The following are the legislators who bear this appalling responsibility (Senators whose names
are
accompanied by asterisks are standing for reelection in 1998):

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)*

Arguments a Majority of Senators Reject

Arrayed against this cloture-blocking minority were every Republican Senator and four
prominent
Democrats — Sens. Inouye, Fritz Hollings (SC), Joseph
Lieberman (CT)) and Daniel Akaka
(HI). By their votes, the latter demonstrated that a clear and bipartisan majority of the Senate
rejects the scare-mongering and distortions offered by the filibusterers. These include:

• Claims made, among others, by Senators Carl Levin (D-MI) and
  Joseph Biden (D-DE) to
  the effect that — if the Senate adopted S.1873 — the Russians would respond by building up
  “thousands” of additional nuclear weapons, ending the possibility for future reductions in such
  arms. Most experts agree, however, that Russia would have been hard-pressed to
  maintain
  its current nuclear arsenal — let alone to expand it significantly — even before its
  current
  economic and political meltdown. With or without additional treaties, the Kremlin will
  almost surely have to cut back the size of its strategic arms as their existing delivery systems
  reach block obsolescence and as economic, industrial and strategic considerations preclude
  their replacement on anything like a one-for-one basis. href=”#N_3_”>⁽³⁾

More to the point, Russia is no longer the only nuclear-armed ballistic missile-wielding
potential adversary with whom the United States may have to contend. As a practical
matter, even if the Russian nuclear threat were to be substantially increased,
the
marginal additional danger thus posed to this country would pale besides the
menace posed by a Kim Jong-Il or Saddam Hussein brandishing just a few long-range
missile-borne weapons of mass destruction against which the U.S. has no
defense.

• The laughable contention that the opponents of S.1873 are really champions of missile
  defense. Senators Byron Dorgan and Kent Conrad
  of North Dakota have been absolutely
  steadfast in their opposition to the deployment of effective, national anti-missile systems.
  While they may try to conceal this reality from their constituents — by supporting development
  of an ABM Treaty-compliant missile defense that might at some point be based in Grand Forks
  — the reality is that any treaty-compliant system will not defend all of the United States
  and will not provide reliable defense against more than a handful of incoming missiles
  for such territory as it does protect. This sort of masquerade suggests, however, that at least
  some legislators are now starting to appreciate that there may be political
  consequences for
  opposing the deployment of missile defenses.

A variation on this theme was the purported desire not to deploy an inferior anti-missile
system when a better one might be just around the corner. This subterfuge has been
used repeatedly by opponents of missile defenses and other military hardware. It is a
transparent scam, as anyone who understands that the only practical way to build
defense equipment is to design, deploy and evolve it. As Senator Jim Inhofe
(R-OK)
noted in the course of today’s “debate,” the way to begin doing so in the missile
defense area would be to modify the Navy’s existing AEGIS fleet air defense
system — an approach that offers vastly more flexible, comprehensive and effective
anti-missile protection for both U.S. forces and allies overseas and for the American
people — at far less cost than the so-called “3+3 deployment readiness program”
favored by the Clintonites.⁽⁴⁾

• Sen. Levin’s bizarre assertion that S.1873 was actually a “pro-proliferation bill.” If
  anything
  would be likely to dissuade rogue nations from proliferating missiles it would be the
  prospect that such missiles would be shot down. In light of recent developments from
  Iran
  to North Korea to China to Iraq, it is a grave disservice to the debate (were one to be
  permitted to occur) to suggest that arms control is a more efficacious means of slowing, to say
  nothing of stopping, this dangerous trend.⁽⁵⁾
• The canard that we should not deploy anti-missile defenses because doing so would take
  funds
  away from defenses against other delivery systems for weapons of mass destruction — from
  suitcase bombs to tramp steamers. The unpleasant truth is that the United States is not
  doing nearly enough to deal with any of these threats. Nor will it likely do so unless and
  until it abandons the posture of “assured vulnerability” that is the insidious legacy of the
  1972 ABM Treaty.

Just as prudent homeowners understand you need fire insurance even if you might
experience a flood, common sense argues for ensuring that the United States has in
place defenses against the evident weapons of choice for most of the United
States’
potential adversaries — ballistic missiles — as well as investing whatever is required to
mitigate the risks of attacks from other quarters.

• Not surprisingly, given the untenableness of these arguments — and their demonstrated lack
  of
  appeal to the American people⁽⁶⁾ — it should come as no
  surprise that Senate opponents of
  deploying missile defenses routinely cite the authority of someone else to bolster their case. In
  late 1995, their poster-child was then-CIA Director John Deutch who, in the middle of a floor
  debate, unveiled a classified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that claimed the United
  States would face no threat of missile attack for at least fifteen years. href=”#N_7_”>⁽⁷⁾

In today’s debate, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Hugh
Shelton
(USA), was the man whose counsel Senators were encouraged to accept uncritically.
Unfortunately for the country, Gen. Shelton’s advice — the equivalent of saying “Wait
until you see the whites of their eyes before you buy the musket“ —
bespeaks a lack
of common sense, not to say an absence of sound military judgment.

The Bottom Line

The shameful situation in which the Senate of the United States — long reputed to be the
World’s
Greatest Deliberative Body — is effectively denied the opportunity to debate and vote on a
measure as important as the American Missile Protection Act of 1998 is most immediately the
handiwork of Sen. Levin. In his capacity as the ranking minority member of the Senate Armed
Services Committee and the most cunning of anti-defense liberals, he has served as point man and
floor-manager for the filibusterers.

The filibuster mounted against S.1873 bears, however, the unmistakable imprint of the
Clinton-Gore Administration. The Administration understands all too well, what Alan Keyes
described in
a recent interview: “There are certain topics in America where people know the instant you have
the discussion, common sense is going to win the day. So don’t present the discussion. Keep
people from focusing on this issue because once we get into it, they will be persuaded. I think
that’s true of the effort with respect to missile defense.”⁽⁸⁾

The fact that the Clinton Administration is able to maintain the extraordinary party discipline
necessary to leave the Nation defenseless against ballistic missile threats, in the face of so much
evidence that this posture is reckless and a potential invitation to disaster, is all the more stunning
in light of the hemorrhage of political support the President has been experiencing among Senate
Democrats — even before the arrival on Capitol Hill this afternoon of Judge Starr’s portentous
report.

As one influential congressional staffer observed in the wake of today’s failed cloture motion
on
S.1873, Senate Democrats have twice been given a chance to provide the votes needed
to
begin defending America. It will now be up to the American people to provide those votes
— and we must all pray they will do so in the election this November.

– 30 –

1. For more on the Cochran-Inouye legislation, see the Center’s
Decision Brief entitled Senate
Should Vote to Defend America ‘As Soon As Technologically Possible’ ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_79″>No. 98-D 79, 6 May
1998).

2. See Shame, Shame: By One Vote, Minority of
Senators Perpetuate America’s Vulnerability
to Missile Attack (No. 98-D 84, 14 May 1998).

3. See What Can Possibly Come of a Moscow
Summit Under These Circumstances? More
Reckless U.S. Disarmament (No. 98-D 150, 24
August 1998).

4. See Irate Senate Supporters of the ‘AEGIS Option’
for Missile Defense Demand Release of
Favorable Pentagon Study (No. 98-D 119, 25 June
1998), Words to Live By: Speaker Gingrich
Asks Clinton to Use Speech to the Nation to Begin Protecting It From Missile
Attack (No.
98-D 15, 23 January 1998) and Validation of the Aegis Option: Successful
Test Is First Step
From Promising Concept to Global Anti-Missile Capability ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_17″>No. 97-D 17, 29 January 1997).

5. See Critical Mass # 2: Senator Lott, Rumsfeld
Commission Add Fresh Impetus to Case for
Beginning Deployment of Missile Defenses (No. 98-D
133, 15 July 1998).

6. See House Blocks Clinton Plans to Implement New
ABM Accords as Evidence Grows of
Enormous Public Support for Missile Defense (No.
98-D 143, 7 August 1998).

7. Congressional complaints about the politicization of this study
evident in its contorted
assumptions and pre-determined conclusion and the contorted assumptions required to reach it
prompted the chartering of a blue-ribbon panel chaired by former Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld. The Rumsfeld Commission laid waste to this flawed analysis and concluded that the
United States may already face a “zero-warning” missile threat. (For more on this
NIE, see the
Center’s Transition Brief entitled It Walks Like A Duck:
Questions Persist that Clinton CIA’s
Missile Threat Was Politically Motivated (No.
96-T 122, 4 December 1996).

8. This interview is one of dozens conducted in connection with a
documentary about America’s
vulnerability to ballistic missile attack currently being prepared by the Center for Security Policy.
For more information about this important project, contact the Center.