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Thursday, June 19, 2008

Vote Would Cut Nuke Funds

By John Fleck and Michael Coleman
Copyright © 2008 Albuquerque Journal; Journal Staff Writers
    A key congressional committee voted this week to cut the 2009 U.S. nuclear weapons budget.
    The House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee voted Tuesday evening to cut $100 million from this year's budget, a 1.6 percent cut for the program that employs about 10,000 people at Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories in New Mexico.
    The vote is the first marker in a budget game that observers say might not be resolved until a new president and Congress take office next year.
    The proposed cut comes as both labs are already reducing their nuclear weapons work force, and coping with budgets that have been losing ground to inflation in recent years.
    There is too much uncertainty about the long-term plan for the U.S. nuclear arsenal— and the complex of factories and labs used to maintain it— to justify the funding increase requested by the Bush Administration, said the subcommittee's chairman, Rep. Pete Visclosky, D-Ind.
    "There is no sense in expending the taxpayers' hard earned dollars absent a clear plan," Visclosky said in a statement.
    The House spending proposal increases funding for nuclear nonproliferation, science and energy research, moves that drew support from New Mexico legislators.
    It would freeze a proposal to set up plutonium manufacturing operations at Los Alamos. The nation needs a full review of what nuclear weapons are for and how many are needed before the manufacturing proposal can proceed, the committee concluded.
    The bill now goes to the House Appropriations Committee, which is scheduled to consider it Tuesday.
    Rep. Tom Udall, D-N.M., a member of the House Appropriations Committee, said he hadn't seen details of the bill as of late Wednesday but doubted he could support it.
    "My inclination at this point would be to vote against it," he told the Journal.
    However, he said the bill "is a big improvement over last year," especially with regard to money for nuclear waste cleanup projects and nuclear nonproliferation.
    Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., called the nuclear weapons cuts "modest," and said he hoped the labs could benefit from increased funding for nonproliferation and non-weapons science research.
    The House bill is the first step in the long process of developing a final budget for the nuclear weapons program. The Senate must also weigh in, and the two bills would then be merged into a final spending plan that would be sent to the president.
    "This is the first real marker in what will be a long story," said Stephen Young, a nuclear weapons analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists.
    Young said one likely possibility is that the current House and Senate will not come to any deal at all, postponing any action until early next year, after a new president and Congress take office.
    The House bill repeats a recent pattern, with the House voting to cut the nuclear weapons program and the Senate trying to restore funding. When asked about the proposed House cuts, Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M. replied: "What's new?"
    Domenici said much of the House bill is good, but he will work to restore some of the money for weapons programs in the Senate.
    "I support a lot of things they've done in the bill, I just believe we'll have a different view, a different version, and hopefully we'll have grounds to stop these cuts," Domenici said.
    He said the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee is scheduled to take up its own version of the bill July 8.