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Floor Speech
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Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, I don't know what is up in the skies, what is going around, flying around, being spotted, and I think there are a lot of questions that need to be answered. If it is a threat to the United States in any way, shape, or form, it is absolutely unacceptable, and I think we all agree--both political parties. But when we start giving advice to this President and the Department of Defense in these matters, we have to stop and reflect on the manager of my local car wash in Springfield, IL.
I went there about a week ago when the first balloon was spotted.
He said: Senator, what is going on up there?
I said: I don't know. I think China is responsible for it.
He said: What are they trying to tell us?
I said: Whatever it is, we better answer them and answer them decisively. We don't need anybody from China or any other country flying in our airspace and endangering Americans in the process.
Then he said to me: But what about those cowboys in Congress who want to shoot it down wherever it is? Are they thinking about what is going to happen if the debris from that--whatever it is--falls on a city, hospital, school playground? They don't want to do that, do they, Senator?
Well, I hope they don't. But I wonder, when I listen to the comments of some people here who argue that we should have shot down that balloon when it was going across the United States, if they reflect on what might have been the collateral damage. We didn't know what was on that balloon. We knew it was the size of three schoolbuses. That is not a small operation. And whether it included anything that was dangerous to us, radioactive or some sort of explosive, we just didn't know.
I think we did the right thing. We waited until it was off the coast, the Atlantic Coast, still near our own territorial waters, and shot it down, and now we are recovering what was in it.
As for the other elements, we are going to be briefed this week on China, and I believe those questions are certainly going to be asked and should be asked. I will be there on a bipartisan basis, as I was last week. It is serious, and we ought to take it seriously. But the notion that we would shoot this down over Louisville, KY, or Springfield, IL, or Chicago--that is not responsible. I trust our military to make that decision and to understand where the debris field might be that would endanger people.
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