Obama proposes to boost spending for nuclear armaments
The Obama administration has proposed to boost spending on the U.S. stockpile of nuclear warheads at a higher rate than for many other military programs, according to White House budget documents published February 2.
In its proposal for fiscal 2016, the White House calls for spending $8.85 billion for maintaining and rebuilding the nation’s nuclear warheads, an increase of more than eight percent over current levels, the documents state.
The Pentagon, meanwhile, is requesting a 4 percent increase over its overall 2015 spending of $560.3 billion, to reach $585.2 billion in 2016; this total includes both the “base” budget and a large, associated military account meant to finance overseas “contingency operations.”
The spending on warheads represents just a small part of a sweeping U.S. effort to completely rebuild the United States “triad” of nuclear forces — including long-range bombers, subs and missiles — over the next three decades. The Congressional Budget Office report last month estimated the cost of this ambitious project at $355 billion through 2023.
Frank Klotz, the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the semi-autonomous agency that runs DOE’s nuclear programs, defended the spending Monday in a conference call with reporters, saying that the stockpile of U.S. nuclear warheads was the “smallest and oldest” that it has been since the Cold War and that the administration had a responsibility to refurbish them. “As long as we have this nuclear deterrent, it must remain effective,” he said.
The NNSA has shifted spending among some of its budget accounts since last year, making precise comparisons to earlier tallies difficult. But Klotz told reporters that besides the new spending for warheads, the current NNSA budget calls for a 3 percent increase in “core” nonproliferation programs, which are designed to reduce or eliminate nuclear materials and radiological threats.
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Copyright 2014 The Center for Public Integrity. This story was published by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C.
