[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 184 (Tuesday, December 9, 2008)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E2339]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       CUT NUCLEAR WEAPONS BUDGET

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                           HON. BARNEY FRANK

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, 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.

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