House Panel Denies Administration Funding for New Nuclear Warhead
For immediate release - May 15, 2008
Washington, DC… A key U.S. House committee has rejected a Bush administration plan to develop a new nuclear weapon, denying a $33 million funding request for the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program, the Friends Committee on National Legislation (Quakers) announced today. Arms control experts believe the House Armed Services Committee’s vote early this morning may have effectively blocked the program from ever moving forward.
"It's almost over for RRW," said Devin Helfrich, a lobbyist for the Friends Committe on National Legislation, "The next administration will have a big decision to make: push the obsolete Bush agenda forward or recommit to serious nuclear disarmament."
Many lobbyists were surprised that the committee included none of the $33 million requested for the program in the House version of the 2009 defense authorization bill, which the panel approved at 2:00 a.m. today. In 2007, the same committee approved $74 million for RRW, although that funding was eliminated in the final omnibus spending bill passed by Congress last December.
The House Armed Services Committee is the third congressional committee to reject RRW. Last year the House and Senate appropriations committees eliminated funding for the program. They are expected to do so again this year.
The defeat of the RRW program has been a high priority for arms control advocates, who are close to claiming victory after what appear to be two consecutive denials of administration-requested RRW funding.
Proponents of RRW argue that an aging nuclear arsenal requires new warheads and a renovated nuclear weapons infrastructure to produce them. Opponents of the program fear that new nuclear weapons development could increase pressure for the United States to resume underground nuclear testing.
Two weeks ago the Senate Armed Services Committee included $10 million for RRW in its version of the defense authorization bill. A House-Senate conference committee will convene this summer to resolve differences between the two versions of the legislation.
For more on FCNL’s nuclear disarmament program, see www.fcnl.org/nuclear.
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The Friends Committee on National Legislation, the oldest registered religious lobby in Washington, is a nonpartisan 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, visit http://www.fcnl.org.
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