'Reject New Nuclear Warhead,' Arms Control Groups Tell Congress
For immediate release - April 15, 2008
Washington, DC… Twenty-eight arms control advocacy and religious organizations called today for a key House committee to stop the administration from building a new nuclear weapon. In a letter to the House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee organized by the Friends Committee on National Legislation (Quakers), the groups warned that support for the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program “would seriously undermine the credibility of U.S. leadership on nonproliferation and disarmament.”
Congress provided no money for RRW in FY08, citing the lack of a comprehensive U.S. nuclear weapons policy to guide nuclear arsenal decisions. Nevertheless, the Bush administration requested $10 million for the program in its FY09 budget request.
“At a time when former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz have joined with former Senator Sam Nunn and former Secretary of Defense William Perry to call on the U.S. to work for nuclear disarmament, it doesn’t make sense to start building new weapons,” said Devin Helfrich, a lobbyist for the Friends Committee on National Legislation. “The leaders of this committee understood last year that there is no solid justification for this program, yet the administration asks for money year after year. Congress and the people of the United States are committed to reducing the nuclear danger, and a step toward that end is eliminating funding for RRW.”
Testifying before the House in 2007, former Senator Sam Nunn noted the strategic error the United States would make by producing new nuclear weapons at a time when other countries are considering developing their own arsenals. “[I]f Congress gives a green light to this [RRW] program in our current world environment,” he argued, “I believe that this will be: misunderstood by our allies; exploited by our adversaries; and complicate our work to prevent the spread and use of nuclear weapons.”
Read the full text of the letter.
More on FCNL’s nuclear disarmament program: www.fcnl.org/nuclear
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The Friends Committee on National Legislation, the oldest registered religious lobby in Washington, is a non-partisan Quaker lobby in the public interest. FCNL works with a nationwide network of tens of thousands of people from every state in the U.S. to advocate for social and economic justice, peace, and good government. For more information: http://www.fcnl.org
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