Senate Republicans are ramping up their criticism of the Obama Administration’s decision to scale back some of its modernization plans, with Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) sparring with National Nuclear Security Administration chief Tom D’Agostino at a Senate Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee budget hearing yesterday. Sessions, the top Republican on the panel, blasted the Administration for breaking modernization promises made during debate on the New START Treaty, zeroing in on decisions to defer construction of the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement-Nuclear Facility and slow life extension work on the W76, B61 and W78/W88, while taking issue with D’Agostino’s assurance that the $7.58 billion FY2013 request for the agency’s weapons program would meet the nation’s needs. “I’m showing you that you delay the plans significantly in critical function after critical function,” Sessions said during a testy exchange with D’Agostino. “You say everything is OK, everybody signed off on it, but we had an agreement at the time the START thing was done and I don’t think it’s being met. I think it’s being missed. We need to have a conversation that’s connected to reality. The reality is things have slipped significantly from what we were heading toward.”
D’Agostino responded that Congress had signaled that it was not on board with the Administration’s previous modernization plans by not fully funding the FY2012 request for the agency’s weapons program, forcing the Administration to reconsider its approach. “Senator, with great respect, the reality is also true that the NNSA was appropriated more than $400 million less than what we needed to do the job,” he said. “You cannot jump back on the saddle. The President has been very clear for the last two years in its commitment. We put forth and requested 10 percent increases to this particular program. The message we get back is the environment doesn’t exist to support that kind of an increase. We got 5 percent increases consistently. Therefore it has caused us to relook at this program. That’s the reality I unfortunately see from my end.”
The issue, however, was not limited to Republican concern. Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), the chairman of the panel, also registered his concern about the scaled back modernization plans, and specifically the decision to defer construction of the CMRR-NF. “I thought we were going to have to have a new building, because it was going to take the new building as something that’s required to meet those functions,” Nelson said. “The fear is if we don’t get the same result here because we don’t have enough money in the budget and we’re patching rather than building.”