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U.S. Legislators Cut Bush Nuclear Weapons Requests By David Ruppe WASHINGTON — U.S. congressional negotiators agreed yesterday to reduce funding requested by the Bush administration for certain nuclear weapons research and development. Reconciling differences between their respective versions of the fiscal 2004 energy and water appropriations bill, House and Senate lawmakers addressed a Bush administration request for $21 million to conduct specific nuclear weapons research and related activities. The legislators agreed to cut $7.5 million from the requested $15 million for the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator program to develop a sturdier nuclear weapon to attack buried enemy bunkers. Another $4 million was withheld from the Advanced Concepts Initiative, a low-yield nuclear weapons research and development program for which the administration sought $6 million, until Congress receives an overdue report from the administration detailing its plans to reduce the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile. In a further setback to administration plans, the legislators scaled back an effort to decrease the time needed to prepare for conducting a nuclear weapons test. The administration had sought to reduce that time from 36 months to 18 months, but the congressional conferees ordered a 24-month period. They did, however, approve the full $25 million sought by the administration to implement the test readiness measures. The negotiators also cut $12 million from a $23-million request for building a new nuclear warhead pit production facility, called the Modern Pit Facility. The pits, the plutonium cores of nuclear weapons, are intended to replace aging ones in the stockpile, administration officials have said. Arms control experts called the moves by the Republican-dominated committees a partial victory. “The Bush administration’s drive for expanding the use of nuclear weapons has suffered at least a temporary setback,” said John Isaacs, president of Council for a Livable World, an arms control organization. “We have compromised rather substantially,” said Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.), who supported full funding, as quoted by Reuters. The Senate version of bill, passed in September, approved the administration’s full request (see GSN, Sept. 17), but in July, the House called for cuts somewhat deeper than those approved yesterday (see GSN, July 17). The nuclear weapons-related funding was sought by the Bush administration as part of a new national security approach that seeks to make available nuclear weapons for tactical purposes as well as for traditional strategic deterrence. Proponents have argued that the threat of country-wrecking nuclear retaliation by the United States might not seem credible to potential adversaries and therefore smaller nuclear options are needed (see GSN, Aug. 14). Many Democrats, national security experts, foreign governments and even some Republican legislators have criticized the approach as destabilizing, saying it could foster international insecurity, undermine nuclear nonproliferation efforts, and jeopardize nuclear arms control treaties (see GSN, Aug. 8)
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