With just a handful of days left until the end of the 114th Congress, a number of bills filed this year on U.S. nuclear security and nonproliferation are on the precipice of failure. Many of the bills made little progress through the legislative process – though in a couple instances this was seemingly intentional.
Amid Republican fears that the Obama administration this summer was attempting a diplomatic maneuver to force a binding prohibition against U.S. explosive nuclear testing, GOP lawmakers in both chambers on Sept. 20 introduced legislation intended to head off such a possibility.
The United States has not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and President Barack Obama never followed through on his pledge to return the accord for consideration by the Senate, which rejected it in 1999. The United States is one of eight nations that must ratify the treaty for it to enter into force, and Obama was reported to be looking for some movement on the matter at the United Nations before his term ended.
The nearly identical Republican bills would have cut off U.S. funding for the Preparatory Commission for the CTBT Organization if the U.N. Security Council approved a resolution that required the United States to halt any actions that would violate the intent of the accord. The Security Council on Sept. 23 instead signed off on a resolution that affirmed the value of the treaty and urged its entry into force, without including any actual mandates.
The CTBT funding bills never made it any further, and that seems just fine with one sponsor.
Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) “introduced H.R. 6068 in order to deter the President from circumventing Congress at the UN and attempting to adopt the CNTBT without Senate approval,” Wilson spokeswoman Leacy Burke said by email. “Shortly after their quick action, the UN Security Council passed a toothless resolution, as opposed to an agreement that would have bound the United States to a flawed multinational treaty.”
Other lawmakers might not be as pleased with the status of their nuclear-related bills.
The Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act of 2016, introduced on Sept. 27 by Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), got no further than its referral to the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The bill would have prohibited the U.S. president from carrying out a first-use nuclear strike absent a declaration of war from Congress that specifically authorizes such action. A corresponding bill sponsored by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) also stopped forward progress following its referral to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Markey was a co-sponsor, with Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), in September of the Department of Energy Whistleblower Accountability Act, which was intended to amend the 1974 Energy Reorganization Act to strengthen protections for whistleblowers at DOE and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The bill is sitting before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
Rep. Cedric Richmond’s (D-La.) Gains in Global Nuclear Detection Architecture Act passed the House and was sent to the Senate in September, but stalled upon being referred to the upper chamber’s Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. The legislation would require the Homeland Security Department’s Domestic Nuclear Detection Office to prepare documentation laying out the rationale for its research and development spending.
Representatives for Lieu, Markey, and Richmond did not respond to requests for comment by deadline Friday.
