Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2024
Floor Speech
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Chair, I rise today to offer a critical amendment to pause wasteful and unnecessary spending at the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility.
This is a responsible measure. It will pause the development of this nuclear facility while we fix the cost overruns and mismanagement associated with this.
Given the rhetoric of the Republican side of the aisle about reining in excessive spending, this amendment should be something that we would all agree on.
The estimated cost of the Savannah River facility tripled from $3.6 billion to nearly $11 billion since the start of the project. It will likely continue to increase since this program is not scheduled to be completed until 2035.
According to the August Government Accountability Office report, it will probably be delayed even further until 2038.
Why are we spending $11 billion on this wasteful facility? You would think it might be part of our critical national security, but that is not the case.
For those unfamiliar with this facility, it is being built to produce plutonium pits, which is the core of a nuclear weapon. We already have thousands of these pits.
Some will stand up here and say, oh, my. We need to replace them because they age out. These pits will last at least 100 years.
Some studies by independent panels of scientists and academics have suggested that these pits have an even longer life cycle.
That is why in the House-passed fiscal year 2024 NDAA, the House Armed Services Committee adopted my amendment for an independent assessment of plutonium-pit aging by experts.
If we really care about responsible government spending, we must ensure there is a need before allocating billions of dollars to rebuild a stockpile that we already have in place and that really should never be used.
To reiterate, this amendment is a pause on next year's spending because we really do need to evaluate the science.
By the way, it is only $858 million, but hey, every dollar counts. This pause is essential, timely and a prudent step.
In our haste to build new nuclear bombs, we must allocate those costs appropriately. A January 2023 GAO report found that the National Nuclear Security Administration lacks a comprehensive schedule or cost estimate on what we are doing here with this particular program. The NNSA has not even identified all of the activities or milestones to achieve an 80 pit per year production capacity.
I am sure that some will argue, wrongly, in my view, that I am undermining national security. They will make exaggerated claims about the necessity to engage in a nuclear arms race.
Well, we are, but the question is, are we doing it wisely? The answer is no. We are spending money unnecessarily and in an ill-advised way.
As a citizen, I am also aware that we face challenges here at home. We have heard many of those. I also know that the new Speaker wants to rein in unnecessary expenditures. I would suggest that this is one.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Chairman, I have a question. I have a question about fairness in the debate. The chair of the subcommittee has offered two pro forma amendments, giving my side of the debate no opportunity whatsoever to respond to the issues that have been raised.
Mr. Chairman, I am curious, is fairness out of order on this floor?
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Chairman, I posed a question to the Chair. Does the Chair have an answer to my question?
Is fairness out of order on this floor?
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Chair, a parliamentary inquiry would be: Sir, how can I achieve, under the rules of the House, a fair debate with equal time on the issue?
Mr. Chairman, I have a parliamentary question before the Chair. Fair is fair, guys.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Further parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Chairman.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Chairman, in an effort to achieve that consultation, sir, could the House provide me with information since I do not have before me the rules of the House.
Perhaps they can provide me the rules of the House and I could read it, or perhaps the Chair can provide some advice on that particular section of the rules.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Further parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Chair.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Chairman, if I might ask another parliamentary question, sir. As the author of this amendment, do I have the opportunity to propose 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 of those pro forma amendments?
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Well, then let us get started.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Chair, I have a pro forma amendment.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. How many minutes do I have remaining, sir?
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Chairman, this House has always operated in a fair and evenhanded way. And I must say, the use of the pro forma amendment by my colleagues on the Republican side creates a very unfair debate, in which the points put forward in opposition to my amendment, I do not have time to deal with.
However, I will take whatever time I have remaining and not spend much time on the necessity for fairness in the debate, which has a whole lot to do with the time available.
Now, very, very quickly, since I have only a minute and some seconds left here.
This is not an end to the plutonium pit production. What it says is to pause for 1 year, an $850 million expenditure on what has become not a plutonium pit but a dollar pit. Billions and billions of dollars have been spent on the Savannah facility, first, to somehow deal with the nuclear waste. That didn't work.
It has been repurposed to build plutonium pits. The reality here is there will not be a pit built in Savannah River for at least a decade. So all of this chatter about the safety of this Nation is nonsense. The reality here is we have a money pit.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Chair, apparently, we want a debate on the plutonium pit issue. Well, let it happen. Let's get some facts here. The 80 pits per year has little to do with nuclear arms, nuclear bombs, it has everything to do with a number that was invented by the committees of this House.
So what are we going to do with these pits?
First of all, the pits will not be built in Savannah River for at least a decade, and quite likely 15 years. Yes, perhaps they will in 15 years produce 50 pits per year. For what purpose?
Specifically, now the pit production is taking place at Los Alamos National Laboratories, which is diligently and wastefully moving forward to produce 30 pits per year.
The first pit at Savannah River--that is the war reserve pit--it is likely to be produced in 3 to 4 years from now, beginning at the rate of one a year and eventually moving to 30 per year, which will probably take a full decade and several billion dollars to do.
What is that pit going to be used for?
Maybe we ought to know before we start talking about the safety of this world and this Nation.
The pits that are going to be built at Savannah River are specifically for a new nuclear bomb, the 87-1, which has not yet been produced.
Presumably, that bomb will go on the new Sentinel missile, which in and of itself is $150 billion that we will spend to replace the Minuteman III missiles that are now in the silos in the upper Midwest.
By the way, the Minuteman IIIs are perfectly good for at least another decade, so why are we spending that money? Presumably because we decided a decade ago that we ought to do it and that somehow the Minuteman III missiles wouldn't continue to work.
In a recent test this year, the Minuteman III worked perfectly well, and there has been no indication that the Minuteman III missile cannot continue to work perfectly well for the next decade or more. We have not yet calculated the full cost of replacing the Minuteman III with the new Sentinel program, but the estimates are well over $150 billion.
For what purpose? To make us safer? No. It won't make us safer at all.
By the way, what bomb will be put on the Sentinel while we await the 87-1? Guess what it is? It is the existing bomb that we have on the Minuteman III. That new weapon, the 87-1, is at least a decade away, and the cost is unknown, but you had better get your billion dollars together because it will surely be in that range.
We need a debate about all of this. This is not about national security. This is about a new nuclear arms race that puts humanity on this planet in serious jeopardy. We have quite enough weapons to deter anybody from using a nuclear weapon, and yes, so do China and Russia.
This is about deterrence. How many bombs, how many weapons, how many delivery systems are necessary for deterrence? If it is a war, yes, all three countries have quite enough to terminate life on this planet. We don't need more to achieve a victory in a nuclear war. We have quite enough already. We can target wherever we need to target--in China, in Russia, wherever. We have quite enough for that.
As a deterrent, we have quite enough for deterrence. Yes, Putin rattled the nuclear saber. To what effect? What effect did his rattling achieve? Nothing.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Chairman, I think I will take a deep breath. I was a little wound up a few moments ago. If the opposition to this amendment would like to go through that process of an additional 5 minutes, we will play that game, and I would actually appreciate doing that.
There is a lot that we need to discuss here. There is a lot that this House needs to consider, and it is about the nuclear enterprise. It is about a 10-year mission that we have been on to rebuild our nuclear programs.
One part of that nuclear program is a new nuclear bomb to be put on the new Sentinel rockets that replace the Minuteman III. A moment ago, I discussed the situation. Do we really need to spend $120 billion, $150 billion over the next decade to replace the Minuteman III and a new nuclear bomb? The answer is, we have time. We have time.
As I said a few moments ago, the Minuteman III will work for a considerable period into the future, and the nuclear weapon that is presently on the Minuteman III is going to work for many more years. It is not aging out. It is perfectly reliable.
What is this 87-1 all about? It is a new bomb. It, in fact, is the first new bomb that we have built in many years. Presumably, it will work better than the bomb that is presently on the Minuteman III and will be used on the new Sentinel rocket when it is ready to be placed into new silos upon which we will spend billions of dollars building the silos and the infrastructure.
The 87-1, this brings us right back to the previous question that we had about plutonium pit production. Do we need additional pit production? I ask all of us to take a calendar, look at the years ahead, and begin to put in place the arrival of the new Sentinel, which will surely be at least a decade, if not longer. Then, look at the pit production that will be able to be put in place in Los Alamos, one a year, two, three, four, five. We will be stacking up new pits in Los Alamos well ahead of the need for this new weapon to be put on the Sentinel rocket. We will have an inventory of pits that would be used for the 87-1.
What I am saying here in this amendment is, wait a minute. Take a look at the calendar. Take a look at the way these pieces fit together--billions of dollars in Savannah River to build nuclear pits that will not even be available for at least a decade and a half. Take a look at the pits we are producing and will be able to produce at Los Alamos and the stockpile of pits that would then be available for the timing of the 87-1, should we ever decide that we need it.
We do not need to spend this money today on the 87-1 or on Savannah River. This is a pause. We heard the new Speaker stand right there and tell us that we have a deficit problem.
We sure as hell do have a deficit problem. Part of it is how we spend our money. We ought to take a look at that.
That is what these amendments are about. These amendments are about spending money unnecessarily now. We have things that we desperately need to do. We need to educate, to research, to be in competition economically with China. Yet, here we are. A small amount of money here, pause this expenditure. Pause it. We are not doing away with the 87-1, although that is another argument we might have someday. Right now, why are we spending this money today? Why?
The new Speaker wants to deal with the deficit. Deal with this. Pause this expenditure. We have plenty of time to deal with this.
For those who argue that this has something to do with our current national security, you are dead wrong because this will not be available for at least a decade, and you can argue whether we even need it then.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.
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