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United States: Congress to Vote on New White House Weapons Research Proposals The U.S. House and Senate are expected this week to vote on the fiscal 2004 defense authorization bill, in which each house’s armed services committee has permitted some previously banned nuclear weapons research (see GSN, May 14). The bill is expected to reach the Senate floor today and the House floor Wednesday, according to the Washington Post. Debate in each chamber is expected to only last two days each, congressional sources said (Pincus/Morgan, Washington Post, May 19). The $400 billion bill includes $15 million to fund research into “bunker-busting” nuclear weapons and includes a provision that would lift a 1993 ban on research into small nuclear weapons, according to the Atlanta-Journal Constitution. New Research Would Be Allowed Bush administration officials have said they are taking a prudent and cautious approach to new nuclear weapons research. Currently, the 1993 ban prevents U.S. scientists from conducting any research on low-yield nuclear weapons, a Defense Department source said. “The first thing they have to do is get the lawyer into the office to see if I can legally think about this or am I going to break the law,” the Pentagon source said. “All we’re basically doing is say, ‘Look, let’s let these guys think about what we need for national security to defend this nation.’ … At the end of the day, it’s just that simple,” the source said. Representative Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.), a critic of the proposals, said she has seen no evidence of new threats that would require changes to U.S. nuclear policies. “It’s part of a mosaic of this neoconservative positioning that is deeply troubling,” Tauscher said. “I think some of these folks would put nuclear tips on ice cream cones if they could,” she said (George Edmonson, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 18).
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