On Tubes and Budget Games

Reuters today explains how New START negotiations have devolved into (dis)armed robbery. Money grubbing for nuclear modernization funds is fair, if unbecoming, as part and parcel of congressional sausage production. But not this s*** again:

Corker who along with Kyl and other senators recently visited three national laboratories, called the state of the facilities and weapons, “pretty alarming.” Kyl was struck by the way that Sandia National Lab showed him a plastic container with 1950s-era vacuum tubes that are being replaced with new circuit boards. “They’ve got to get on with this,” Kyl said.

Kingston is going to pop a blood vessel in his eyeball (read his previous diatribes on vacuum tubes).

While horse trading is part of the game, potential treaty skeptics’ funding demands at this point have become rather trifling. Increased nuke money is in the FY 2011 request. It’s in the 10-year plan. It’s in the 20-year plan. Senior administration officials have publicly reiterated their commitment to it. But some senators are unhappy because the planned investment will come from “savings the government hopes to get from interest rates”? Put the nation on a more sound fiscal footing and you won’t have to worry about it, for chrissakes!

Future year budget plans are not set in stone. (Remember when the Bush administration used to project decreased defense spending? Ha! How’d that turn out?) Senators of course understand this variability. They know the administration can’t guarantee future funding streams, as doing so would infringe on Congress’s power of the purse and neuter the U.S. government’s ability to adjust future funding to meet shifting priorities. Congress fights tooth and nail to preserve such flexibility, which is why appropriators are always hesitant to approve multiyear procurement of major weapon systems.

But senators are still objecting on this basis when it comes to nuke modernization. In other words, senators are asking President Obama to guarantee something (modernization funding) that only they themselves can constitutionally guarantee.

The administration has done its part to integrate the modernization program into its future planning, but all it can do is ask for the money. It is up to Congress, including New START skeptics, to provide the funds. Senators: this is ultimately your responsibility, not that of the executive branch. Stop trying to pass the buck.