In a post-sequester era, members of Congress who are leaders on budget issues should be giving close scrutiny to wasteful government spending, including expensive weapons programs whose national security rationale is dubious. I wrote an op-ed in the Morristown Daily Record arguing that the expensive upgrade of the B61 nuclear bomb should be a target of such scrutiny. New Jersey Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen is a fiscally conservative Republican with extensive influence over the nuclear weapons budget, so he’s well-positioned to ask the tough questions about whether taxpayers can – or should – fork over $10 billion to upgrade the B61.
An excerpt:
“Just two years ago, NNSA said that upgrading the B61 would cost $4 billion. Now, in a classic example of the out-of-control spending that has strained the federal budget, the price tag has more than doubled, to a whopping $10.4 billion.
Such short-sighted planning and ballooning costs would never be acceptable to the executives of a private corporation. Congress shouldn’t accept them either.”
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