As Nick Roth and Ulrika Grufman documented last week, House Strategic Forces Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Michael Turner (R-OH) recently sent a letter signed by the Republican members of the Subcommittee to Senate appropriators asking that they fully fund the President’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 request for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) weapons activities account. Turner also sent a letter to the Supercommittee with the same message.
Nick and Ulrika have already done a neat and clean job of rebutting many of Turner’s arguments. One area that deserves further exploration, however, is the issue of where exactly money to offset reductions in weapons funding would come from.
I examine this question in a new article over at the mothership. Here’s the bottom line:
Given the current budget situation, the unintended consequence of seeking more money for weapons activities is that every additional dollar that is added to this account could put the budget for vital nuclear terrorism prevention and nonproliferation programs at risk. Such a result would be reckless and undermine U.S. security.
