Reuters
June 12, 2001
WASHINGTON (Reuters): As President Bush opened his first trip to Europe with missile defense high on the agenda, congressional Democrats on Tuesday renewed their opposition to deploying a national missile defense before it is proven ready.
At a rally outside the Capitol with an array of arms control groups, Democrats said Bush’s missile defense proposals would destabilize the world and alienate allies.
“It would be billions of dollars down the drain,” said Rep. Rush Holt (news – bio – voting record), a New Jersey Democrat, adding the system was “worse than a waste of money” because it could damage existing arms control accords and lead to a new arms race.
Bush, who began his visit to Europe on Tuesday in Spain, is trying to sell his missile defense plans to European allies who have expressed profound skepticism at his proposals.
At his first stop in Madrid, Bush said the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the former Soviet Union was a “relic of the past” and must be set aside to allow research on a system that would shoot down incoming missiles from states such as North Korea (news – web sites) or Iran.
But congressional Democrats said a costly arms race would be the ultimate result. They questioned why the United States was rushing to deploy a defense system before testing had shown it to work.
“It would greatly destabilize the world,” Democratic Rep. Barney Frank (news – bio – voting record) of Massachusetts said of the missile system. ”China would undoubtedly respond by increasing their missile capacity. So then will the Indians and so then will the Pakistanis.”
The Democratic rally concluded two days of meetings in Washington among arms control activists and citizens’ groups who lobbied lawmakers to oppose Bush’s missile defense plans and sponsored an e-mail campaign against the proposals.
Democrats have made it clear Bush will have a tough time getting his missile defense plans through Congress, and the task was made tougher by the recent switch of Senate power to Democrats.
The switch elevated Democratic Sens. Carl Levin of Michigan and Joseph Biden of Delaware, both skeptics of Bush’s plans, to control of the Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees, respectively.
Levin’s panel will receive a closed-door briefing on Wednesday on the Pentagon (news – web sites)’s ongoing strategic review and its impact on missile defense plans, and Biden has promised exploratory hearings on missile defense proposals.
Rep. Tom Allen, a Maine Democrat, said the expected cost of $60 billion or more for a missile defense system would rob funds for other priorities.
He said he will introduce a bill soon to require the administration to seek monetary contributions for the cost of a missile system from those allies protected by it.
-Reuters