| Arms Control Today | January/February 2008 |
|
|
||
|
|||
|
|||
In the final months of 2007, Congress approved and President George W. Bush signed fiscal year 2008 appropriations bills substantially increasing spending above the president's original budget request for nonproliferation activities in the Departments of Defense, Energy, and State. Congress also approved a fiscal year 2008 defense authorization bill that seeks to expand Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) programs administered by the Defense Department to countries outside of the former Soviet Union. Bush vetoed that measure, citing unrelated provisions, and the CTR provisions are expected to remain intact in any final bill (see page 36).
Department of Defense
Congress appropriated $428 million for the CTR programs, an increase of $80 million over the administration request and reversing a trend of funding cuts for the program in the fiscal year 2007 budget.
The Strategic Offensive Arms Elimination Program, which supports activities to decommission silos and eliminate or de-fuel and store ICBMs, saw its budget increase to $93 million from the administration’s request of $78 million. Congress more than doubled funding for Nuclear Weapons Storage Security, from $22 million to $48 million, while money for nuclear weapons transportation remained at $38 million.
The Bush administration request contained no additional funding for chemical weapons destruction, but the defense spending bill provides $6 million. In the past, money in this section has been designated for the chemical weapons destruction facility under construction at Shchuch'ye in Russia, but the bill directs that $5 million of the total should be used for a chemical weapons incinerator in Libya, pending authorization by House and Senate appropriations committees.
The defense authorization bill, meanwhile, calls on the Defense Department to set a firm timetable for completing the facility at Shchuch'ye and to assess plans for its operation, including potential costs, oversight, and long-term sustainability. Independent estimates of the amount of money needed for completion approach $200 million, but the program has been slowed by problems with Russian contractors and cost overruns. (See ACT, May 2007.)
The Biological Threat Reduction program won an increase to $158 million from $144 million in the budget request. In a Feb. 5, 2007, press release, CTR’s co-founder, Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) called for $100 million more for the program to secure pathogens, build capacity for early-warning systems, establish monitoring stations at borders and other sensitive locations, and better contain possible biological attacks.
Congress appropriated $9 million more in funding above the administration’s request for the WMD Proliferation Prevention program, which also seeks to secure borders against material smuggling, for a fiscal year 2008 total of $47 million.
The defense authorization bill would make it easier to fund threat reduction programs in states outside the former Soviet Union. In particular, it would permit unlimited funding during an emergency to expand the program to other states and would authorize the National Academy of Sciences to undertake a study of how best to strengthen and expand CTR programs. It also calls for focusing new initiatives on states in Asia and the Middle East, singling out North Korea, which has pledged to end its nuclear weapons program.
The authorization measure would also eliminate provisions in current law that require the president to certify that Russia is complying with several arms control agreements. In 2005, Congress granted the president permanent authority to waive such certifications, and the current measure would remove the need for a waiver.