Thank you for your letter concerning the Senate's view of the SALT II agreement. I welcome your commendation of the statements Secretary Brown and I have made relating to the Five Year Defense Program.
I have also noted your comments about certain aspects of SALT II's terms and about the shift in the comparative military positions of the Soviet Union and the United States, and your views on a number of further considerations bearing on various aspects of the Soviet-American relationship.
The issues you raise have been probed in depth during the hearings before the Senate committees, and will be further examined in preparing for the floor debate and in the course of the debate itself. I therefore share your interest in discussing these matters in detail with me and members of my Administration.
I also share your desire to achieve a bipartisan consensus on these issues of longrange national security strategy and arms control, and to that end we should begin these meetings at an early date. I am confident we can find the common ground on which the prompt ratification of this treaty, so important to our own national security and the peace of the world, will be achieved.
Sincerely,
JIMMY CARTER
Note: This is the text of identical letters addressed to Senators Henry Bellmon of Oklahoma, Lloyd Bentsen of Texas, David L. Boren of Oklahoma, Rudolph E. Boschwitz of Minnesota, Lawton Chiles of Florida, John C. Danforth of Missouri, Dennis DeConcini of Arizona, Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico, David Durenberger of Minnesota, J. James Exon of Nebraska, S. I. Hayakawa of California, H. John Heinz III of Pennsylvania, Sam Nunn of Georgia, Larry Pressler of South Dakota, Harrison Schmitt of New Mexico, Alan K. Simpson of Wyoming, Richard Stone of Florida, John W. Warner of Virginia, and Edward Zorinsky of Nebraska.
Jimmy Carter, Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty Letter to 19 Members of the Senate. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/248288