Final Spending Bill Provides Victories for Non-Proliferation
November 23, 2004
One of the last major bills Congress passed as it exited for the year was the Omnibus Appropriations Bill that included funds for nonproliferation programs and new nuclear weapons programs at the Department of Energy.The conference committee on the Energy and Water Development portion of the bill gave a boost to U.S. nonproliferation programs by providing, overall, $75.7 million more than the Administration request. Due to reductions in funds for Fissile Materials Disposition, programs in two other key areas received a $114 million increase:
- The new Global Threat Reduction Initiative and other programs for removing nuclear weapons-usable materials from vulnerable sites around the world were provided $30 million.
- The International Materials Protection, Control and Cooperation program (MPC&A) received $322 million, $84 million more than the $238 million request, to accelerate securing nuclear warhead sites in Russia, initiate security upgrades at Russian Federation serial production enterprise sites, provide additional resources for the Second Line of Defense program to prevent smuggling nuclear materials out of Russia, and accelerate other high priority MPC&A activities, to include countries outside the former Soviet Union.
The conference committee also followed the lead of the House Appropriations Committee and eliminated in full the Bush Administration’s request of $27.6 million for research on a Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator weapon, or nuclear bunker buster, and the requested $9 million for “Advanced Concepts” research on new weapons designs, a program that could have funded new, lower yield nuclear weapons designed to be used on the battlefield.
The Administration’s $29.8 million request for funds for a new facility to build plutonium pits for constructing new nuclear weapons was cut to $7 million, and the Department of Energy was barred from using any funds to select a new construction site. According to reports from Appropriations Committee staff, the conference committee also reduced the Administration’s request for enhancing nuclear test readiness from $30 million to $22.5 million and maintained a 24 month test readiness level, instead of reducing it to 18 months.
As stated by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), “the Omnibus Appropriations bill contains no funding for new nuclear weapons programs, which is a consequential victory for those of us who believe the United States sends a wrong signal to the rest of the world by reopening the nuclear door and beginning testing and development of a new generation of nuclear weapons.”