REP. TURNER: TIME IS RIGHT FOR NNSA REFORM

The financial issues facing the nation provide the necessary spark to reform the National Nuclear Security Administration, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee told reporters yesterday. Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio) has held a hearing and several briefings exploring potential NNSA reform, and while he declined to predict how far his panel would go to address bureaucratic inefficiencies at the agency, he suggested the time was right for reform. “Sometimes when you have budgetary pressures you get the opportunity to do the right thing,” he said. “I think this is an opportunity for us to do the right things; look to ways to reform NNSA, to find the dollars to apply them really to the issues of national security instead of bureaucracy.” Some experts have suggested that the Administration consider moving NNSA out of the Department of Energy, while others have suggested less drastic measures, like reducing redundant regulations and directives and applying more industry-wide standards. “There are a lot of ways to do it,” Turner said. “Certainty the DOE-NNSA relationship and redundancy of oversight is part of the problem.”