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North Korea tested a nuclear weapon on Monday May 25th. Can the United States trust North Korea with a nuclear bomb? What steps are you, as a member of Congress, willing to take to ensure that the world stays safe?
Asked by: Elvin J. from Nashville, TN
Asked of All U.S. Congress on May 25th, 2009
Answer from: U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA)
Well, North Korea can certainly not be trusted with a nuclear weapon, and it’s unlikely Congress will do anything effective to protect us from a nuclear weapon of North Korea. Don’t believe in missile defense because it is much easier to smuggle a nuclear weapon into the United States than to use a missile. Although of course the North Koreans get a certain Viagra out of having big missiles. What can I say, it’s a testosterone thing, you might not understand. And a nuclear weapon is about the size of a person, which of course varies, and—you know while our border security is now designed to deal with illegal immigrants trying to come across at least our Southern border. We’ve got almost nothing on our border and of course our goal in border defense is to deal with people who aspire to work for minimum wage in the United States. In recession maybe even those jobs are scarce. And if you’re able to build a nuclear bomb you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to sneak it across our border. The thing that Congress should be doing is making it clear to China that if it continues to subsidize North Korea, which is the lifeline of the North Korean government, then there may be some diminution in their access to the U.S. market. The reason we won’t do that is because the importers have way too much power and so we will not be able to—Congress is unlikely to take the action that it could take to get at North Korea through its lifeline which is Beijing. And then there’s this fear that the Chinese are owed a lot of money, they’re somehow our bankers, they have power over us. That’s absurd because imagine how much power your banker would have over you if there was no loan enforcement, there was no foreclosure, there was no-you know, the fact is that I expect we will repay our debts to China, but the only reason we’re borrowing the money from them is so that we can buy more stuff from them that, probably, we could do without in large part. So I’ve been fighting for this for many years. The U.S. could have a stronger policy, and I’ve explained the reasons why we don’t.
Answered on Jul 16th, 2009
