Senate committee: Depot funding freeze 'troubling'

By Ryan Garrett/Register News Writer

The annual U.S Senate Budget Committee report will include language that emphatically tells the Pentagon to stop studying alternatives to chemical weapons disposal projects at depots in Richmond and Pueblo, Colo.

The report also tells the Pentagon to free frozen funds appropriated for the projects.

Authored by Sens. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., and Wayne Allard, R-Colo., the report condemns the Pentagon's delays in Kentucky and Colorado and warns against continuing those tactics.

"The (Defense) Department's actions are troubling because the department refuses to spend previously appropriated funds for those projects," the report states.

"The department should stop the needless study of alternative demilitarization technologies, complete the design process for both sites and include sufficient funds in future budgets to fully fund those facilities," it continues.

In a recent statement, Bunning described the report as calling on the Defense Department to "stop playing games with the funding for the design and construction of the chemical demilitarization facility at the Blue Grass Army Depot."

The Defense Department "has been stonewalling for years and it is time for the DOD to produce results," Bunning said.

The senators' report language follows a heated discussion at a March 1 Budget Committee hearing with Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, during which Bunning and Allard accused the Pentagon of deceiving residents in both states.

"You know how long we've been researching the destruction of those weapons?" Bunning asked Wolfowitz, according to a transcript of the meeting. "And even the money we appropriated in the last (Defense Department) budgets, over the last one, two, three years, you want to use it for other purposes now."

Wolfowitz said the demilitarization program should be a priority, but costs are "just going through the roof."

Bunning followed by urging Wolfowitz to visit Kentucky.

"I would invite you to come with me to the Blue Grass Army Depot and walk through it, and you would understand how urgent it is to get rid of those things properly," the senator said.

"Let's do that," Wolfowitz replied.

No visit has been scheduled.

Two weeks before the budget hearing, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice said she was committed to disposing of the U.S. stockpile of chemical weapons by the Chemical Weapons Convention treaty deadline of 2012.

"If the United States of America is not complying with its obligations, it's hard to force anyone else to comply," Rice reportedly told Allard in February. "We have been very much a country of laws that insisted on our own compliance so we want to keep that record."

However, officials have acknowledged that the budget cuts proposed by the Pentagon would make the deadline impossible to meet.

The Budget Committee report exemplifies a broader spectrum of attention being paid to the chemical weapons disposal effort, said Craig Williams, director of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, a Berea-based citizen's watchdog organization.

"The Budget Committee hasn't in the past included language directly related to chemical weapons disposal," Williams said. "That reflects a growing body of concern in the Congress beyond the normal bodies of jurisdiction, such as the Armed Services Committee and the Appropriations Committee.

"I think that's a good thing."