House Defeats Effort to Restore LANL Funding

Press Release

House Defeats Effort to Restore LANL Funding

Congresswoman Heather Wilson today voted to restore some funding for nuclear programs and New Mexico's national laboratories, but the House defeated the proposed amendment 312-121.

The amendment by Rep. Tom Udall (D-NM) would have restored funds to the Road Runner computer, the Readiness in Technical Base and Facilities at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Science campaign.

Wilson said the devastating cuts in the Energy and Water Appropriations Act of 2008 are the most radical change in nuclear policy since the 1990s, and said that the national security impact were not adequately considered before the House completed debate on the bill today. The House will vote on the bill in July.

Speaking on the House floor yesterday, Wilson said, "the decisions imbedded in this legislation will lead us either to return to nuclear testing, or to abandon nuclear deterrence because we will stop maintaining the stockpile."

Wilson, Ranking Republican on the House Subcommittee on Technical and Tactical Intelligence, strongly opposes the cuts. In addition to speaking on the House floor this week, she released a letter to the Appropriations Committee leaders last week urging reconsideration.

In 1992, the United States stopped nuclear testing. In 1996, the U.S. joined the moratorium on nuclear testing and said we will continue to maintain the stockpile through Science Based Stockpile Stewardship.

"This bill devastates that capability to certify that our nuclear weapons are safe, secure and reliable without testing," Wilson said.

The bill has a 20 percent reduction in one year in the nuclear weapons program at Sandia National Laboratories, the engineering facilities that are solely responsible for over 6,000 parts in our nuclear weapons. It includes a 40 percent reduction at Los Alamos National Labs nuclear weapons program. Eighty percent of the existing deployed stockpile is designed by Los Alamos National Laboratory. They are responsible for being able to tell us if these weapons are safe secure and reliable.

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