December 10, 2008
CUT NUCLEAR WEAPONS BUDGET
[Page: E2339]
SPEECH OF
HON. BARNEY
FRANK
OF MASSACHUSETTS
IN THE HOUSE OF
REPRESENTATIVES
Wednesday, December 9, 2008
Mr.
FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Speaker, in a thoughtful and well
documented article in the Boston Globe for December 3, Joseph
Cirincione makes a very persuasive case for putting significant
reductions in our nuclear weapons budget at the head of the list of
budget savings President-elect Obama intends to make. Mr. Cirincione is
the president of Ploughshares, and some of us remember the good work he
did as a staff member working on trying to fashion a sensible nuclear
weapons policy years ago in the House. He speaks with a great deal of
knowledge and I am very pleased that someone as responsible and well
informed as Mr. Cirincione has come forward to make this case. As he
says in his article, the President "can cut obsolete programs and
transfer tens of billions of dollars per year to pressing conventional
military and domestic programs."
Madam Speaker, no rational
solution to the problem of an ever-increasing budget deficit can be
imagined that does not include significant reductions in the rate of
military spending. Joseph Cirincione demonstrates how this can be done
in a way that does no damage whatsoever to our national security and I
ask that the article be printed here.
[From the Boston Globe, Dec. 3, 2008]
Need Cash? Cut Nuclear Weapons Budget
(By Joseph Cirincione)
President-Elect
Barack Obama needs money, "To make the investments we need," he said
last week, "we'll have to scour our federal budget, line by line, and
make meaningful cuts and sacrifices, as well."
There is no
better place to start than the nuclear weapons budget. He can cut
obsolete programs and transfer tens of billions of dollars per year to
pressing conventional military and domestic programs.
Transfers
to domestic programs will help jumpstart the economy. Military spending
provides some economic stimulus but not as much as targeted domestic
spending. This is one reason Representative Barney Frank has called for
a 25 percent reduction in military budgets that have exploded from. 305
billion in fiscal year 2001 to $716 billion in fiscal year 2009,
including the $12 billion spent every month for wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
We must, of course, spend what we need to defend
the country. But a good part of the military budget is still devoted to
programs designed for the Cold War, which ended almost 20 years ago.
This is particularly true of the $31 billion spent each year to
maintain and secure a nuclear arsenal of almost 5,400 nuclear weapons,
with 1,500 still deployed on missiles ready to launch within 15 minutes.
We
can safely reduce to 1,000 total weapons, as recommended by Senator
John Kerry and other nuclear experts. That reduction would save over
$20 billion a year, according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary
Assessments.
The reductions could be done without any sacrifice
to US national security, particularly if the Russians did the same (as
they indicated they'd be willing to do) either by a negotiated treaty
or the kind of unilateral reductions executed by former presidents
George H.W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991.
The arsenal of
1,000 warheads could be deployed on 10 safe and secure Trident
submarines, each with enough weapons to devastate any nation. In total,
the smaller, cheaper arsenal would still be sufficient to destroy the
world several times over. Further reductions would generate further
savings over time.
Additional savings are available in the
related anti-missile programs created during the Bush administration.
Total spending is now $13 billion a year—up from $4 billion in 2000.
Bush and former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld exempted the
agency from the normal checks of Pentagon tests and procurement rules
in an effort to institutionalize the program, locking in the next
president, Obama will inherit half-built facilities in Alaska and
California, along with plans to build new sites in Poland and the Czech
Republic, but no assurance that the interceptors actually work—and a
huge bill to pay. If Obama were to continue the program as is, he would
spend an estimated $62 billion through 2012.
In a congressional
review of these programs, Representative John Tierney of Massachusetts
concluded, "Since the 1980s, taxpayers have already spent $120 to $150
billion—more time and more money than we spent on the Manhattan project
or the Apollo program, with no end in sight." Tierney recommends
refocusing the program to concentrate on defenses against the
short-range weapons Iran and other nations currently field, and
restoring realistic testing and realistic budgeting. Doing so could
save $6 billion or more a year.
Further savings can be found by
stopping a planned expansion of nuclear weapons production facilities
pushed by contractors and some government nuclear laboratories. The
facilities would cost tens of billions of dollars and produce hundreds
of new nuclear warheads. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates strongly
backs the expansion. In a direct challenge to Obama's plans to reduce
nuclear weapons and ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, Gates
said in October, "there is absolutely no way we can maintain a credible
deterrent and reduce the number of weapons in our stockpile without
either resorting to testing our stockpile or pursuing a modernization
program." Obama will have to back him down or pony up billions to pay
Gate's nuclear tab.
What will the new president do? He comes to
office with a comprehensive nuclear policy that could save billions.
Obama will now have to show that this new security team will implement
the change he promised, not their own parochial agendas.