KYL SLAMS DECISION TO ‘THROW IN THE TOWEL’ ON MODERNIZATION BUDGET

Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), one of the leading voices in the Senate on nuclear weapons issues, lashed out yesterday at the Obama Administration’s decision to scale back its plans to modernize the nation’s nuclear weapons complex and arsenal, accusing the Administration of breaking promises made during debate on the New START Treaty. Kyl was at the forefront of efforts to extract a commitment from the Administration to spend $88 billion from FY2012 to FY2021 on the NNSA’s weapons program. The commitment came in the form of the so-called 1251 modernization report, but after Congress cut into the weapons program account in FY2012 and faced with other budgetary pressure, the agency chose to back off of its modernization plan, slowing several life extension efforts and deferring construction of a major facility, the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement-Nuclear Facility planned for Los Alamos National Laboratory. “They made an absolute commitment to me that the 2012 budget, 2013 budget, budgets thereafter, would contain the funding in the 1251 report and that commitment has now not been kept,” Kyl said during a speech yesterday at the Fourth Annual Nuclear Deterrence Summit. “It isn’t because of a lack of support in the United States Congress. So rather than redouble their efforts to make up the difference, they basically threw in the towel. Perhaps they wanted to do that all along.”