With the $88 billion plan to modernize the nation’s weapons complex and nuclear arsenal on the Congressional chopping block, senior Administration officials yesterday sought to create separation between the New START Treaty from the modernization plan that was generated during debate on the treaty, suggesting during a House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee hearing that proposed cuts should not force a reconsideration of the Administration’s participation in the agreement with Russia. The Senate’s New START Resolution of Ratification requires the Administration to report to Congress whether it would remain in the “national interest” to continue participating in the treaty if the modernization plan is not funded, and Jim Miller, the Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, said the Fiscal Year 2012 funding cuts proposed for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s weapons program by House and Senate appropriators would be enough to compel the Administration to “examine the question.” Senate appropriators have provided $7.2 billion of the Administration’s $7.6 billion request for the program, while the House has provided $7.1 billion.
House lawmakers earlier this year inserted language into the House version of the FY2012 Defense Authorization Act that would tie the implementation of the New START Treaty and future nuclear reductions to the modernization funding, and Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio), the chairman of the subcommittee, referred to the treaty and modernization plan as a “package deal” at the beginning of yesterday’s hearing. “In the absence of full funding for the modernization program, the President needs to explain to the Congress whether it is still in the interests of the United States to remain a party to the treaty,” Turner said. But when pressed by Republican members of the panel, other senior Administration officials suggested that the funding issues alone should not determine continued U.S. participation in the treaty. “There are many components to this,” Ellen Tauscher, the Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, said during the hearing. “It’s not just one or the other. It’s not just, ‘If you don’t have this, you don’t get that.’ I think you have to look at this in a very holistic way. You have to look at it as more than just the simple boiling down of, ‘If you don’t have modernization, can you actually keep the New START Treaty?’ ”
That explanation didn’t seem to satisfy Republican members of the panel, and during a back-and-forth exchange with Tauscher, Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) asked, “am I wrong in assuming if we don’t have the money for modernization we can’t rely on the lower numbers of weapons that New START calls for.” Tauscher, however, did not budge. “I don’t believe so,” she said. “I believe that this is not a zero sum game.” U.S. Strategic Command chief Gen. Robert Kehler agreed, suggesting that funding would be only part of his calculus on continuing to participate in the treaty. “I would form my assessment based upon the force that we have and whether we can execute the missions. As long as we can execute the missions, my recommendation would be that we should go forward,” Kehler said, adding: “If a budget reduction was resulting in some decline in that mission as we could look to the future then I would offer my judgment accordingly.”
