In a move partially designed to one-up the Democrats, House Republicans voted today to impose a one-year moratorium on all earmarks, not just those to for-profit companies.  The ban, approved by voice vote, would apply not only to appropriations bills but also to authorizing and tax measures.

“Yay!” you say? “One of my biggest fears was yet another earmark for the C-17 or the F-35 extra engine!”

Not so much – It looks as if the so-called ban on added spending may be full of holes. The Hill notes that:

… billions added to the defense bills for existing national security programs under contract with major defense companies such as Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman probably would not be affected.

For example, when House appropriators add more funds for Boeing’s C-17 cargo aircraft, they do not disclose them as earmarks. Instead, they are considered programs essential to national security even though none of the funds are requested by the Pentagon. These funds benefit lawmaker districts where the weapons systems are built.

Further, the Senate does not look to be on board with any current plan for a ban on earmarks. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman, and champion of the C-17, Daniel Inouye has already begun to fight back, remarking that the action was not in the “best interest of the Congress or the American people.”

Today’s announcement is a shrewd political move for a House that has recently been plagued by controversy and talk of corruption, but bears little weight. Congress will not be fighting any tigers in the near future.

UPDATE 3/11: Okay, okay, some people *cough* Dan and Mary *cough* don't get the reference. From Wikipedia: I Can Lick 30 Tigers Today! and Other Stories, by Dr. Seuss -- "The title story concerns a boy who brags that he can fight 30 tigers and win. He makes excuse after excuse, finally disqualifying all the tigers until he must fight no tigers at all." Ha!

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Security Matters, Defense Spending, Congress (all tags)

Sen. John Thune (R-SD) has something on his mind. No, it’s not David Brooks. It’s the U.S. nuclear triad.

In February, Thune tried to frame the forthcoming U.S. Nuclear Posture Review as a White House-Pentagon schism. Much to Thune’s chagrin, however, Navy CNO Adm. Gary Roughead said he had “been very comfortable with the discussions that we've been having.”

Last week, Thune decided to try try again. This time, he asked Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norman Schwartz during a SASC hearing whether New START and the Quadrennial Defense Review would require cuts to the U.S. bomber fleet. Said Thune:

THUNE: Now, when I posed the question about the substantial cut to the bomber force to Admiral Mullen a few weeks ago, he said there is currently consideration for a reduction in the number of overall bombers in relation to the START follow-on treaty. That's cause for concern in my view because I've long expressed the fear that there -- it would be proposed by the administration -- in effect a way to negotiate the bomber leg of the nuclear triad away. And – are these not substantial cuts to the bomber force that -- as they're being envisioned by the QDR?

When I first read that, I thought, “Whoa, that’s weird, Mullen said New START would require bomber cuts? I think I’d remember that!” So I checked the transcript. Here’s what Adm. Mullen actually said on February 2:

THUNE: Do you plan on retiring any bomber aircraft in the near future? And, I guess, a following question would be what are the assumptions that are lying what appears to be a substantial reduction in the number of bombers?

MULLEN: I'm not -- I am not aware that -- that we are, although I -- I'd certainly would want to check for the record to make sure that -- that -- that I've got that right, but there certainly hasn't been any big discussion about the retirement of bombers.

Apparently worried about his initial uncertainty on this question, Mullen waited until the end of the hearing and then asked to set the record straight. He then said:

MULLEN: Mr. Chairman, just one for the record and it's -- it's brief. Senator Thune's question I spoke, he was asking about decommissioning bombers and in fact what I didn't say was there is consideration for a reduction in number of bombers and overall start in negotiations which are ongoing and which have not come to conclusion yet.

Now, this is ambiguous, but I read it as Mullen saying that while New START may reduce the number of nuclear-coded bombers permitted per side, the bombers won’t need to be decommissioned (i.e. cut up). Still, it’s pretty unclear. Luckily, Schwartz brought his A game and offered a solid explanation. He told Thune:

SCHWARTZ: With respect to potential changes in mission, I do not foresee a reduction in B-52 force structure if there is an adjustment to nuclear tasking. As you are well aware, the B-1 is not a nuclear- tasked platform. The B-52 is. If there's a requirement for fewer B- 52s on the nuclear side, we will still require their capability on the conventional side. They simply will no longer be dual-tasked.

THUNE: Do you think that the cuts to delivery vehicles contemplated in the START treaty, though, and those negotiations are likely to come primarily out of the bomber force?

SCHWARTZ: Sir, I don't think that will be the case. I do not.

Well said, General.

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Nukes on a Blog, New START, Congress, Senate, Posture Review, Air Force (all tags)

Shorter Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) from Saturday: if the Obama administration does what the New York Times suggests vis-à-vis nuclear weapons policy and does “not update its remaining stockpile of nuclear weapons to make them safer and reliable,” then Senate approval of New START and the Test Ban Treaty is “unlikely” and “in doubt”. Inhofe also wrote that “While some reduction in our nuclear arsenals may be warranted, deep cuts would be destabilizing and would encourage other countries to enter the nuclear competition.”

Since New START will not enact deep cuts, will not include all of the NYT’s recommendations, and has already been paired with a significant budget increase for safety and reliability work by the nuclear labs, it appears that Inhofe’s preconditions will be satisfied when it comes to New START. He may oppose portions of the forthcoming Nuclear Posture Review, as well as the Test Ban, but that opposition will have nothing to do with the merits of New START, which will include modest nuclear weapons reductions that Inhofe himself grudgingly accepts are warranted.

Inhofe is not the only lawmaker to espouse “OBAMA’S ARMS CONTROL AGENDA IS HORRIBLE (p.s. New START seems mostly ok).” So too does Sen. John Thune (R-SD), whose own Policy Committee admitted that “the triad may be able to sustain certain cuts in warhead and delivery vehicle numbers.” Tritto (ditto +1) Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who in 2009 endorsed “a move, as rapidly as possible, to a significantly smaller force.” Even Sen. Jon Kyl’s (R-AZ) anti-arms control MO has not included explicitly opposing New START. Of course, this could all change once New START actually exists. But at this point, the core purpose of the treaty--modest reductions--still seems to enjoy wide bipartisan support.

In other words, Kingston’s analysis from December still rings true:

The approach of some vocal Republicans to the “New START” negotiations goes something like this: suggest a dozen different ways that a new arms control agreement with Russia could be detrimental to U.S. security without actually opposing a new arms control agreement with Russia.

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Nukes on a Blog, Congress, New START, CTBT, Posture Review, FY 2011 Budget Request, Senate (all tags)

During last week’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the fiscal year 2011 U.S. Navy budget request, Senator John Thune (R-SD) stuck to his parochial and political guns by quizzing the witnesses about U.S. nuclear force posture. His line of attack on the administration’s policy process suggests an argument that opponents of New START may advance during Senate debate on the agreement, whenever that occurs.

Following an exchange on nuclear delivery vehicles (pun!), Thune cited last year’s Guardian article and asked whether it was true that President Obama had rejected the Pentagon’s previous Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) draft because it was too timid. This question dovetailed with the “numbers game” criticism I dissected last week, wherein conservatives claim that the White House is cutting nuclear weapons sans either strategy or international/ intragovernmental consultations.

In response, Navy CNO Adm. Gary Roughead detailed just how inclusive and accountable the Obama administration’s NPR process has been. He said:

I've been involved in the NPR and I believe that the process we've had, the considerations we've had, has placed great value on our nuclear deterrent force, all legs of that triad, and the considerations of being able to feel the strategic needs of the nation.

[snip]

I'm very comfortable with the discussions we've had, the involvement that we've had, and how we're looking at things.

[snip]

I think as we have worked our way through what's a very complex process, I've been very comfortable with the discussions that we've been having, sir.

Policymakers and analysts will inevitably disagree about what the new NPR contains. Yet there is clear evidence that the White House has not unilaterally imposed its agenda on the Pentagon. The process has been collaborative, responsible, and, perhaps as a consequence, a teensy bit behind schedule.

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Nukes on a Blog, New START, Senate, Congress, Posture Review, Obama Administration (all tags)

The National Nuclear Security Administration is slated to receive $11.2 billion in fiscal year 2011, a 13.4 percent increase over the current fiscal year. Undersecretary Tauscher said the increase will make a "very crucial investment" in the new Stockpile Management program. Vice President Biden said the increase “reverses this decline [in nuclear laboratories and facilities] and enables us to implement the president's nuclear-security agenda.” Hell, even NNSA framed the increase as part of “implementing the nuclear security agenda President Obama outlined in his Prague speech.”

NNSA is definitely all about the Prague.

Notice that nobody said what we all know: the NNSA budget increase is hush money; or, as KReif put it, proof that the Obama administration “views increased funding for the nuclear enterprise as a necessary step to secure Republican support for a new arms control agreement and the CTBT.” Perhaps “retainer fee” sounds less gangster?

Leave it to a number cruncher to cut through the BS. In response to a question about the cost of New START implementation at his budget briefing Monday, DOD Comptroller Robert Hale said “the adds to the budget of the National Nuclear Security Administration…will improve nuclear infrastructure in a variety of ways and – and we think that is an important step toward START ratification.”

I’m glad we’re all on the same page now.

UPDATE 2/4: I didn't see it before posting, but Jeffrey Lewis takes up this same issue over at ACW.

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Nukes on a Blog, New START, START, Congress (all tags)

Yesterday the House passed HR 730, the Nuclear Forensics and Attribution Act. The bill is headed to President Obama for his signature now that it has passed both houses of Congress.

As explained by lead sponsor Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA),

The Nuclear Forensics and Attribution Act will authorize the National Technical Nuclear Forensics Center at DHS to coordinate the government’s nuclear forensics efforts and encourage technicians and scientists to enter the field. It will also call upon the President to lead international efforts to share nuclear forensics data.

The legislation establishes a National Nuclear Forensics Expertise Development Program, which will include such goodies as:

•    Undergraduate scholarships (including at least one summer internship at a national lab or related federal agency)
•    Doctoral fellowships (with a commitment to work on nuke forensics for the government for at least two years afterward)
•    3-5 year research grants for faculty and grad students
•    Other scholarship opportunities (especially for students from historically underrepresented communities, except no mention of women – what up with that?)

Pretty good stuff for technically-inclined baby wonks to get after once this program starts humming along.

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Nukes on a Blog, Congress, Jobs (all tags)

Last week, GSN’s Martin Matishak summarized the Fiscal Year 2010 budget cycle for nonproliferation programs. For a variety of reasons, some of this cycle’s funding levels were less than in previous years.

Matishak talked to Kingston, so many of NOH’s thoughts are in the GSN article. In a nutshell:

The White House set a "very ambitious goal" for securing the world's nuclear materials, [Reif] said, so "we were a little disappointed to see that at least the 2010 request was even less than the 2009 [request] and was also less than what was appropriated in 2009."

[snip]

One of the justifications for the reduced budget could be that the administration was still working out the strategy to achieve its nuclear-security goal when it issued its fiscal 2010 budget last February, according to Reif.

[snip]

Reif said the upcoming Nuclear Posture Review, the fiscal 2011 budget and that Obama administration's nuclear security summit next spring will "determine the direction of our threat reduction efforts."

Until then "the U.S. isn't going to able to achieve the sort of lofty goal the Obama administration laid out in the Prague speech and during the [presidential] campaign ... of securing all vulnerable fissile materials in four years without a much larger commitment to these programs," he said.

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Nukes on a Blog, Congress, Defense Spending, Obama Administration (all tags)

Not to be overshadowed by his friends in the Senate, Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA), dean of the Massachusetts delegation and a leading light on nuclear nonproliferation, sent his Nuclear Posture Review recommendations to the White House yesterday.

All Markey wants for Christmas is mission limitation to core deterrence. Well, that and the end of high-alert, a no first use pledge, a stockpile of fewer than 1,000 warheads, no new-design warheads, and CTBT ratification.

As Markey himself might say, once more unto the breach, dear friends.

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Nukes on a Blog, Congress, START, CTBT, Posture Review (all tags)

Chaired by Senators Kent Conrad (D-North Dakota) and Michael Enzi (R-Wyoming), the Senate ICBM Coalition is comprised of senators who represent states that host, maintain, or administer ICBM forces and/or operations. On November 6, the Coalition released “The Long Pole of the Nuclear Umbrella,” a report that argues in support of maintaining the current U.S. force of 450 ICBMs.

The report’s executive summary states...

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Nukes on a Blog, Congress, START, Posture Review, Senate, New START (all tags)

In their classic Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy, Priscilla Clapp and Morton Halperin describe Congress as “hydra-headed” because of the way it influences foreign policy both formally, such as through legislation, and informally, such as through pressure from individual members.

Caucuses are the perfect example of an informal method. According to Congressional Quarterly, there are 265 caucuses and working groups in Congress today. They run the gamut from the powerful Blue Dog Coalition to the more epicurean Congressional Wine Caucus. Not surprisingly, there are a number of caucuses that focus on nuclear weapons, arms control, and proliferation.

To illuminate the executive-legislative interaction that is already occurring and will intensify as the Obama administration moves to complete bilateral U.S.-Russian reductions of nuclear warheads and delivery vehicles, it helps to identify these conduits of informal power on Capitol Hill.

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Nukes on a Blog, Congress, START, Senate (all tags)