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.
House Passes Anti-Nuclear Terror Legislation (Again), Ball in Senate’s Court (Again)
Last week (May 20 to be precise), the House passed the Nuclear Terrorism Conventions Implementation and Safety of Maritime Navigation Act of 2013 (H.R. 1073) by an overwhelming vote of 390-3.
Summer of Sanctions: Congress Plans New Iran Penalties
On the Center’s website, I’ve written a long piece on the new sanctions bills that the House and Senate will be considering in the next few months. Some of them are measures similar to what we’ve seen before, but there are also some new twists being mu…
HASC preparing to go wild
At last week’s House Strategic Forces Subcommittee hearing on the FY 2014 budget request for nuclear weapons programs at the Department of Energy and the Pentagon, Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL) once again declared his intention to use t…
Budget Busting SSBN(X) Style
Last week, STRATCOM Commander Gen. Robert Kehler provided further confirmation of what we’ve been suggesting for some time: The current plan to build twelve new Ohio-class replacement ballistic missile submarines (also known as the SSBN(X)) probably is…