House Rejects Measure to Fund New Nuclear Warhead
Military spending bill includes no money for Reliable Replacement Warhead
For immediate release - May 23, 2008
Washington, DC…The House yesterday rejected a measure to devote new funding to a Bush administration proposal to build a new nuclear warhead and revamp the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal. The House approved the defense authorization bill after defeating an amendment to allocate $10 million to the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program. The final version of the legislation includes no money for RRW.
The amendment, which would have added back money for RRW that had been written out of the military spending bill, failed in a 271-145 vote, with 44 Republicans crossing party lines to oppose RRW. Rep. Steve Pearce (NM) introduced the measure after the House Armed Services Committee deleted funding for RRW during its May 14 markup.
“The resounding defeat of the Pearce amendment in the House should send a strong signal to proponents of RRW in the Senate and the administration that people in the United States strongly oppose new nuclear weapons,” said David Culp, a nuclear disarmament lobbyist with the Friends Committee on National Legislation.
Opponents of the new warhead cited the need for a comprehensive, bipartisan U.S. nuclear weapons strategy. Reps. Ellen Tauscher (CA), Pete Visclosky (IN), and Rush Holt (NJ) led the opposition to funding RRW. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which would design the new warhead, is located in Rep. Tauscher’s district.
The Senate will take up the defense authorization bill after the congressional Memorial Day recess. Backers of the warhead program could still insert the $10 million for RRW requested by the administration into the Senate version of the bill, but RRW’s opponents are cautiously optimistic. Ever since Congress deleted all funds for RRW in last year’s final omnibus appropriations bill, lawmakers have shied from providing any further funding for the program until they receive the results of a congressional review of the current U.S. nuclear arsenal.
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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