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Congress Boosts U.S. Nonproliferation Funding
Congress boosted the White House request for Cooperative Threat Reduction programs by $80 million, to $428 million, for fiscal 2008 at the Defense Department. The budget for the Strategic Offensive Arms Elimination Program increased to $93 million from the Bush administration’s request of $78 million. Funding is used for silo decommissioning and elimination or storage of ICBMs. Lawmakers increased funding for Nuclear Weapons Storage Security from the requested $22 million to $48 million but did not change the $38 million funding request for nuclear weapons transportation. Congress directed $6 million toward chemical weapons disposal projects, even though the White House sought no extra funding. All but $1 million of that money was to be used to build a chemical weapons incinerator in The defense authorization bill, which President George W. Bush vetoed, requires the Pentagon to prepare a schedule for finishing construction of the Russian chemical weapons disposal plant at Shchuchye (see GSN, April 12, 2007). It could cost another $200 million to complete the troubled project, according to independent estimates. Lawmakers secured $158 million for the Biological Threat Reduction program, up from the requested $148 million. U.S. Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) had sought an extra $100 million for biosecurity (see GSN, Feb. 7, 2007). Congress also directed $47 million for the WMD Proliferation Prevention program, which aims to prevent smuggling of unconventional weapons materials. That is up from a $38 million request, Arms Control Today reported. The defense authorization bill promotes threat reduction efforts outside the former At the Energy Department, the fiscal 2008 omnibus funding bill boosted the budget for Nonproliferation and Verification Research and Development by $125 million to $390 million. That includes $207 million for proliferation detection research and $133 million for nuclear explosion monitoring. Various other programs also received tens of millions of extra dollars, including a $26.5 million boost to $151 million for Nonproliferation and International Security. The budget for International Nuclear Materials Protection and Cooperation efforts rose by $258 million to $630 million. The Global Threat Reduction Initiative received a $75 million boost, to $195 million, to further its efforts to eliminate or secure radiological and nuclear materials. The State Department’s Nonproliferation, Antiterrorism, Demining and Related Programs received $487 million in the omnibus bill, a $23 million hike from the White House request. Lawmakers boosted other projects at the agency, adding $6 million to the White House request of $18 million for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (Daniel Arnaudo, Arms Control Today, January/February 2008). Former State Department nuclear nonproliferation official Linda Gallini told Mother Jones magazine that WMD experts were pushed out of the agency in past years in favor of Bush administration political appointees. “A pall was cast over the office” when John Bolton took over as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security in 2001, Gallini said. Among the reported targets in the changeover that followed were career diplomats and those who questioned the existence of prewar Iraqi WMD programs or did not appear to back efforts to push Mohamed ElBaradei out of his position as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. “The advice of career professionals was suddenly taken as disloyalty,” Gallini said. Offices focused on nuclear nonproliferation in
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