Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act, 2004

ENERGY AND WATER DEVELOPMENT APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2004

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I rise today to support Senator Feinstein's amendment to remove funding for the development of new nuclear weapons. The administration is seeking $15 million to fund more research on the robust nuclear earth penetrator a nuclear bunker buster and $6 million for research on new nuclear weapons.

I must register my shock that the administration has requested this funding, reversing almost 60 years of U.S. nuclear policy. Funding such a request is the first step on a "slippery slope" that could irreversibly lead us to testing and maybe even deploying these new nuclear weapons.

It is imperative that we nip this mischief in the bud by supporting Senator Feinstein's amendment.

Let me remind my colleagues that the administration has consistently identified one distinct threat to U.S. security and reiterated this threat innumerable times in the past year: The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their transfer to terrorists.

In the President's speech to the United Nations on Sept. 12, 2002, in his address to Congress in October, 2002, in his State of the Union speech this past January, he repeatedly expressed his concern about the proliferation of biological, chemical, and especially nuclear weapons.

Many Members of Congress voted to send our young men and women to Iraq to eliminate the threat of Saddam Hussein's supposed nuclear arsenal. We were told that while Saddam had not yet developed nuclear weapons, he was actively intent on doing so and the consequences would be horrific.

Meanwhile, during this same year, the administration is looking to create new nuclear weapons.

Our diplomats have just returned from six-way talks in Beijing aimed at resolving the North Korean nuclear crisis instigated last fall when Kim Jong IL announced his defiance of the 1994 Agreed Framework. How can our negotiators in good faith reassure the North Koreans and the other participants at these talks of peaceful United States intentions in the region, while at home, in our labs, nuclear scientists are experimenting with new nuclear weapons that will eventually have a yield 70 times that of the bomb dropped at Hiroshima?

It is abundantly clear that there is a copycat effect of U.S. military planning. According to former Undersecretary of Energy, Rose Gottemoeller:

Other countries watch us like a hawk. They are very, very attentive to what we do in the nuclear arena. I think people abroad will interpret this as an enthusiastic effort by the Bush administration to re-nuclearize. And I think definitely this nuclear funding is going to be an impetus to the development of nuclear weapons around the world.

I clearly remember the devastation that the atom bombs wrought not only on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but on all society.
As Adlai Stevenson put it, "Man wrested from nature the power to make the world a desert."

Since those two unforgettable days in 1945, administration after administration, Republicans and Democrats, have made it clear that nuclear weapons have held a special status within the U.S. arsenal. U.S. policymakers have committed to the international nuclear arms control regime.

The research funding in this bill for the nuclear earth penetrator departs from 60 years of nuclear policy. If these weapons are researched, they will be inevitably be tested, which will undermine a 10-year U.S. commitment to a nuclear testing moratorium.

I am deeply concerned about the standing of the United States in the international community.
As a result of the unilateral approach the Bush administration has taken in Iraq, we have lost friends, trust, respect and admiration in the global community. This new nuclear policy departure will only further erode U.S. leadership and esteem in the world.

I urge my colleagues to support this vital amendment.