She added, “The Bush Administration proposed and the Congress recently appropriated nearly $8.0 billion in funding for this fantasy-based device.   The United States has already spent the equivalent of $148 billion on research and development since missile defense was first proposed in the 1950s and the latest CBO estimates project that implementation of the Bush Administration's missile defense concept will cost as much as $238 billion.”  

“These numbers are astonishing considering the program’s lack of success, and even more stunning considering that the Administration is making it more difficult for Congress to monitor the program,” Schakowsky concluded.

Schakowsky’s opening statement from today’s  Subcommittee hearing is below.

This hearing is an opportunity to discuss the Bush Administration’s reorganization of the so-called missile defense system This isn’t the first hearing this committee has had on missile defense.   In the past, we discovered deficiencies in just about every facet of this program’s development, from testing (or lack there of), to acquisition, to oversight—yet each appropriations cycle, Congress spends billions on the failed system.  The only thing we consistently learn from hearings and research on this subject is how much information and accountability is lacking, and how much of a pipe dream this program is.

The Bush Administration proposed and the Congress recently appropriated nearly $8.0 billion in funding for this fantasy-based device.   The United States has already spent the equivalent of $148 billion on research and development since missile defense was first proposed in the 1950s and the latest CBO estimates project that implementation of the Bush Administration's missile defense concept will cost as much as $238 billion.  These numbers are astonishing considering the program’s lack of success, and even more stunning considering that the Administration is making it more difficult for Congress to monitor the program. 

Today, the GAO will present a report to this subcommittee outlining recommendations for a more knowledge-based decision making process at the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) in order to reduce risks in developing the airborne laser phase of the proposed defense package.  I agree with the GAO’s recommendations.  In fact, I am quite familiar with them because similar recommendations were made in Dr. Philip Coyle’s August 2000 report, which this subcommittee analyzed. Each time I attend a briefing or read the paper, there is always one very simple point—spending billions of dollars on a system that does not work and will not make us safer, is unacceptable. 

The Bush Administration holds every government program aimed at social improvement to the strictest standard of accountability.  If it were in HUD or the Department of Education, it would be gone.  Yet when it comes to the Missile Defense system, the Bush Administration is trying to evade responsible and necessary standards of accountability.  The Missile Defense Agency has yet to even complete a Testing and Evaluation Master Plan, a Program Implementation Plan, or an Operational Requirements Document.  In other words, the Administration is spending billions of precious taxpayer dollars on a concept that they haven’t even figured out how to test accurately. 

Why, does the Administration cloud oversight and wave accountability for a system that is so expensive?  Why does the Administration try to hide the development of this system from the Congress and the American people who pay for it, but consistently tout the success of the program?  Why does this Congress continue to appropriate billions of dollars each year, with virtually no proof that this system can pass test scenarios that even slightly resemble real life situations, and with no proof that the technologies in question will ever defend our country from missile attack?  These are the questions to which the American people deserve answers. 

I thank the witnesses for attending this hearing and I hope that the efforts of the GAO are not simply addressed for the benefit of this hearing.  We have a Government Accounting Office for a reason.   I charge the Missile Defense Agency with the responsibility of taking the GAO recommendations seriously, and also taking this hearing as a message from the American people, that we deserve and demand to know how our money is being spent.   In my opinion, if these recommendations are not implemented, and if we fail to link funding for this concept to real, clear and convincing scientific facts, further investment of this program will be even more of a waste.