Catching up on news from yesterday. From the press release:
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senator Joseph I. Lieberman (ID-CT) lauded the unanimous adoption of his amendment, put forward with Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), urging that any U.S. missile defense systems deployed to Europe must be capable of protecting both Europe and the United States.
“This unanimous vote by the Senate sends the clear message that it is imperative that we have an effective missile defense program given the threats to America and our allies. Just one year after the United States signed an agreement to deploy the Ground-Based Midcourse defense system to Poland and the Czech Republic, the Obama administration says that it considers the GMD system just one of several options—some of which cannot protect the U.S homeland,” Lieberman said. “The Senate today made clear that we will only support alternatives to the current plan that can defend both the United States and our European allies.”
In his floor statement for this amendment, Lieberman discussed a February 2009 Congressional Budget Office (CBO) study titled Options for Deploying Missile Defenses in Europe, which examined the proposed GMD system and some of the alternatives that the Obama administration is considering. This study found that the “[Missile Defense Agency’s] proposed system would provide redundant defense from a third interceptor site for all of the continental United States. None of the alternatives considered by CBO provide as much additional defense of the United States.”