March 17, 2014

REP. TURNER FIRES BACK OVER SENATE MODERNIZATION FUNDING

By ExchangeMonitor

Repeating criticism of Senate cuts to nuclear weapons modernization efforts in the Fiscal Year 2012 Energy and Water Appropriations Act, House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee Chairman Michael Turner (R-Ohio) shot back at Senate aides who have brushed off his accusations that other projects were funded at the expense of modernization. Yesterday, Turner repeated his claim that $2 billion set aside for the modernization program was used by the Senate Appropriations Committee to fund water projects, and cited Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and former Defense Secretary Robert Gates as backing the claim. “Now some unnamed Senate staffers apparently have taken issue with my characterization of them taking the Department of Defense money for water projects. I submit the best way to prove Secretary Gates and Panetta and me wrong is to fully fund the president’s modernization program for which the Department of Defense has already paid the office twice. The money was there, it is not now. They should put it back,” Turner said at an event at the Heritage Foundation.

Turner and Republican members of the Armed Services Committee have noted that the $11.05 billion provided by Senate appropriators for National Nuclear Security Agency programs last month represented a drastic cut to President Obama’s $11.8 billion budget request, while funding for water projects increased 4 percent. Earlier this month Senate aides said that accusations that water projects were funded at the expense of National Nuclear Security Agency programs were false because $11 billion in NNSA funding was sheltered as “security” funding as part of the Appropriations Committee’s energy and water allocation.

… MORE SUPPORT FROM ADMINISTRATION NEEDED?

Turner has also pushed for linking the implementation of arms reductions in the New START treaty to modernization funding, a provision included in the House’s version of the Defense Authorization bill but watered down in the Senate version. “I am surprised that the Administration has threatened to veto the National Defense Authorization Act over this provision,” Turner said yesterday. “My view on how we proceed in conference will largely be determined by the Administration’s energy level in seeking restoration of the nuclear modernization plan. I have seen a lot of energy from the White House and OMB sent in to defend, for example, the state foreign operations budget, but next to none on the nuclear weapons program the president pledged to support.” He added, “In fact, with the exception of the leadership of the Department of Defense, which invested $8.3 billion of its budget in the modernization program, the rest of the Administration has been missing in action.”

The Administration did act in recent days to make a case for the NNSA funding, urging Congress to provide “robust” funding for the agency’s modernization plan even as it wrestles with how to cut hundreds of billions from the nation’s budget over the next decade. The request came in an Oct. 19 letter from White House Office of Management and Budget Director Jacob Lew to Senate Appropriations Committee chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) that outlined the Administration’s broad budgetary priorities. “The Administration urges the Congress to support robust funding for NNSA to continue the commitment to modernization of the nuclear weapons complex and to upgrading the stockpile set forth in the Nuclear Posture Review and reaffirmed as part of the New START Treaty ratification process,” Lew wrote.

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