Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriation Act, 2014

Floor Speech

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Mr. JOHNSON of Ohio. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

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Mr. JOHNSON of Ohio. Mr. Chairman, today, I rise in strong opposition to the amendment offered by my good friend from Texas.

First and foremost, my opposition to this amendment is about national security. Since the 1940s, the United States has had a U.S.-owned and -operated uranium enrichment entity in place. This allows the U.S. to control its uranium stockpile, to be a signatory to nuclear weapons treaties, and make sure that we do not rely solely on foreign-owned companies for our uranium needs.

This amendment would put this streak of nearly 70 years in jeopardy if it were to pass and would leave the U.S. without any domestic producer of enriched uranium.

Some will say that we can rely on a foreign-owned company in New Mexico to supply our uranium needs. First, the National Nuclear Security Administration and the Department of State have made it clear that we will never be able to rely on a foreign-owned company for our nuclear weapon triggers, to fuel our nuclear military fleet, or for any other national security purpose, period, end of story.

Even if we could rely on a foreign-owned company for these purposes, I have serious concerns about this company. This company in question is the former employer of AQ Khan, the man responsible for giving away nuclear secrets to North Korea, Iran, and Pakistan. The company did not have the controls in place to safeguard their secrets. As we now know, Pandora's box was opened because of AQ Khan and the lack of oversight of this company.

How can we now consider giving them sole control of our country's uranium enrichment process? This would put our national security at risk if we ever changed our laws to allow foreign-owned outsourcing of uranium enrichment.

Furthermore, if this amendment passes, it will likely cost the taxpayers billions more in the long-run. The United States Enrichment Corporation is a publicly-owned corporation that has invested and will invest billions of private sector money into developing new and improved enrichment technology. If USEC is not able to finish their research program and goes belly up, the Federal Government will be forced to start a new enrichment program from scratch and spend hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars to start up its own uranium enrichment program.

So we can either spend $40 million plus now and leverage billions of dollars of private investment, or we can be here a year from now appropriating billions of dollars more. I will take $40 million today over billions of dollars tomorrow any day.

In addition, the taxpayer is protected from failure of this research program. The Department of Energy is both the owner of the intellectual property of the centrifuge machines and even of the machines themselves. DOE will be able to recoup any taxpayer money that goes into the project. But make no mistake: if this project is stopped, DOE will have to spend billions more of taxpayer money to get the project up to scale as opposed to billions of dollars coming from the private sector.

Finally, this amendment, if passed, would be a jobs killer. The American Centrifuge Project currently employs over 1,000 people in multiple States. Furthermore, the project utilizes over 160 American supplier companies in at least 28 States. All of that would go away if this amendment were to pass.

I would also like to remind my colleagues that a similar amendment was offered last year on the Energy and Water appropriations bill with my friend from Texas and the new Senator from Massachusetts, Ed Markey. It was easily defeated because of all of these very same reasons. Nothing has changed in the last year.

I urge all of my colleagues to again defeat this amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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