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Washington, D.C. -- Rep. Rush Holt (NJ-12) today joined Rep. John Tierney (MA-6) in offering an amendment to the 2007 Defense Authorization bill that would have slashed funding on the failed ballistic missile defense program.
“The Missile Defense Agency has been given an impossible task,” Holt said. “Our current missile defense system has not worked, and hoping for a better outcome is not enough. Wishing will not overcome physics. The system has been confused by decoys and faced numerous other testing troubles despite the fact that we have spent more than $100 billion on it over decades. It’s time to stop throwing good money after bad, and focus our funds on the parts of the program that are testable.”
The Holt-Tierney amendment would have cut almost $4.8 billion from the $9.1 billion program for Fiscal Year 2007. Had the amendment passed, it would have:
- Eliminated funding for additional land based ballistic missile defense deployments.
- Terminated the space-based interceptor program.
- Ended deployment of Boost-phase interceptors.
- Stopped the Airborne Laser program.
- Saved $4.8 billion to meet other unfunded national defense priorities.
The remaining $4.3 billion would have been used to restructure the program and more tightly focus its research and development efforts. The amendment failed on a vote of 124-301.
As the non-partisan Center for Defense Information reported last month, in the past two months, no less than seven reports have been released that were critical of various aspects of the overall Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS). Two reports by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), two from the Defense Department’s own Inspector General’s office, and reports by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), Congressional Budgetary Office (CBO), and the Pentagon’s Director, Operational Test & Evaluation (DOT&E) all raise doubts about the feasibility of missile defense.
“One of the craziest ideas I have ever heard is that we should deploy this missile defense system as a way of testing it,” said Holt. “It should be thoroughly tested before it is deployed and brought online. We don’t buy anything else without fully testing it.”
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