Democrats this week won control of the House of Representatives, and the aspirant chair of the House Armed Services Committee said they plan to go after nuclear weapons when the 116th Congress convenes in January.
In the cross hairs: the 30-year nuclear modernization program established by the Barack Obama administration in 2016 and augmented this year by the Donald Trump administration to feature one to two new low-yield nuclear warheads. The Trump administration also wants to un-retire the B83 gravity bomb, which Democrats in Congress had relegated to the scrap heap as a condition of extending the life of the smaller B61 gravity bomb.
“We need to take a responsible approach to the nuclear weapons enterprise, and recognize that the current $1.5 trillion plan to build new nuclear weapons and upgrade our nuclear weapons complex is unrealistic and unaffordable,” Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, said Thursday in a widely distributed statement. “We currently have a reliable nuclear deterrent that is more than adequate. Focusing on President Trump’s new nuclear arms race would increase the risk of miscalculation, wreck the budget, and detract from our ability to invest in cyber, information operations, and our troops to counter serious threats to our security and efforts to undermine our democracy.”
Besides more than $1 trillion in investments in replacement missiles, bombs, carrier craft, and new Department of Energy infrastructure, the current modernization plan includes maintenance costs that DOE and the Pentagon would incur even if they were not refurbishing nuclear weapons.
Smith has never really liked the plan, and even before the election was open about his opinion that the nuclear security enterprise and the arsenal it fuels could use a haircut.
“The bottom line is, we can get the deterrence we need with fewer nuclear weapons,” Smith told NS&D Monitor in September. “I’m open to the conversation [of] ‘is that fewer aspects in all of the Triad?’”
Smith indicated a willingness to protect at least the Navy’s ballistic missile submarines, which because of their high survivability and ability to check global threats he called “the most important part” of the nuclear Triad.
But it could be open season on the other two Triad legs: the Air Force’s ground-based intercontinental ballistic missiles and strategic bombers. In particular, Smith told the Monitor, the U.S. has too many intercontinental ballistic missiles, and wants to buy too many new ones.
Perhaps the easiest target for Smith, who on Thursday announced he would run for chair of the House Armed Services Committee, is the low-yield, submarine-launched ballistic missile warhead the GOP-controlled 115th Congress approved this year over widespread Democratic objection.
Smith has said that planned low-yield variant of the W76 submarine warhead, which Armed Services Democrats universally opposed, should be banned. In September, the would-be chair put his money where his mouth was when he signed on to a bill that would prohibit research, development, manufacturing, and fielding of the planned low-yield warhead, for which Congress approved $65 million in funding for fiscal 2019.
Dubbed the W76-2, the warhead would tip the Trident II-D5 missiles carried aboard Ohio-class ballistic-missile submarines, and to be carried in the future by planned Columbia-class submarines. Smith has rejected the Trump administration argument that the U.S. needs W76-2 to counter similarly powerful Russian weapons that Moscow could use to end a conflict it starts, but cannot finish, with conventional weapons.
The House Armed Services Committee sets policy and spending ceilings for the two major federal nuclear bureaucracies, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and the Defense Department, via the annual National Defense Authorization Act.
The House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee helps set the NNSA budget each year, based on Armed Services guidelines. Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) will have to step down as chair of that subcommittee next year, with Democrats set to take over. The House Appropriations defense subcommittee helps set the Pentagon’s budget.
Even if Smith should take the gavel at Armed Services, Republicans picked up Senate seats in Tuesday’s midterm elections, bolstering a bulwark of votes that were already firmly in favor of the current nuclear modernization regime.
And, of course, President Donald Trump will remain in the White House for the entirety of the next Congress, meaning Democrats find themselves in a debate, and not the driver’s seat of a bulldozer, until and unless they flip the White House and the Senate in 2020.
Republicans hemorrhaged seats in the House while picking up seats in the Senate, and although there will be a few new faces in states and districts with important nuclear security constituencies, incumbents who wanted to keep their jobs generally did, with one exception.
Here, in alphabetical order by nuclear facility represented, are the winners of Tuesday’s elections.
Kansas City Plant
Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) easily won an eighth term representing Missouri’s 5th District, which includes the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Kansas City Plant: an assembly site for the non-nuclear components of nuclear weapons. Cleaver took about 60 percent of the vote to defeat Republican challenger Jacob Turk, a software engineer who has unsuccessfully bid for Cleaver’s seat before, and a field of minor-party candidates.
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) lost her Senate seat to Republican Josh Hawley, the state’s attorney general. McCaskill’s defeat means the Kansas City Plant may lose a voice on the Senate Armed Services Committee, where McCaskill served. The panel makes annual authorizations for all National Nuclear Security Administration facilities and vets the president’s nominees for senior NNSA management jobs.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) won a fourth term representing California’s 15th District, which includes the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Swalwell took about 70 percent of the vote to trounce Trump-style Republican challenger Rudy Peters.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the state’s senior senator, handily fended off a general election challenge from the left by California state Sen. Kevin de León (D). Feinstein took about 55 percent of the vote to de León’s 45. Feinstein is among the most powerful and driven nuclear policy-makers in Congress. A skeptic of nuclear modernization who is open about her desire to curb nuclear weapons, Feinstein is the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee that writes the Department of Energy’s annual spending bill.
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Rep. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) won a sixth term representing New Mexico’s 3rd Congressional District and its crown jewel, the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Luján, who is now bucking for a role in the Democratic leadership of the House-majority-to-be, defeated Republican challenger Jerald McFall by more than 30 percent of the vote.
Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) won a second term, dispensing both Republican challenger Mick Rich and Libertarian Gary Johnson, a former New Mexico Republican governor and Libertarian Party presidential candidate. Heinrich has a seat on the Armed Services Committee.
Nevada National Security Site
Democrat Steven Horsford defeated Republican Cresent Hardy to win the seat being vacated by freshman Rep. Ruben Kihuen (D-Nev.). Kihuen is departing Congress amid scandal.
Rep. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) upset Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) 50 percent to 45 percent (there were several also-rans) giving the silver state a pair of Democratic Senators to represent the National Nuclear Security Administration’s weapons-testing site.
Pantex Plant
Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) slaughtered Democratic challenger Greg Sagan, taking more than 80 percent of the vote. Nevertheless, Thornberry will surrender his Armed Services gavel in the 116th Congress after the blue tide came in.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) fended off Democratic phenom Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) to win a second term in the upper chamber. Cruz has occasionally carried water in the Senate for the Pantex nuclear-weapons-assembly facility in Amarillo.
Sandia National Laboratories
Incumbent Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-N.M.) was elected governor of New Mexico this week, and her 1st House District seat, which includes the Sandia engineering lab in Albuquerque, went to Democrat Debra Haaland. Haaland took almost 60 percent of the vote to defeat Republican Janice Arnold-Jones.
Savannah River Site
Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), leapfrogged Democrat Sean Carrigan by about 56 percent to 43 percent, with a third-party candidate siphoning away an ultimately meaningless number of votes. Wilson will get a ninth term representing the 2nd District of South Carolina, and his work is already ahead of him in the 116th Congress: continuing the state’s fight to save the Savannah River Site’s Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, construction of which the NNSA officially canceled in October.
Y-12 National Security Complex
Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.) got a fifth term in the 3rd District, eclipsing Democrat Danielle Mitchell about 64 percent to 35 percent in a race that also included a third-party. The polite former personal injury lawyer is a reliable ally for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s main uranium complex (even if he lacks the towering influence over the site commanded by Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chair of the Senate appropriations panel that funds Y-12). Fleischmann said he would like to remain on the House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee.
Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) is leaving Congress and Washington, where he clashes personality-wise and (sometimes) politically with Trump. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) from Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District, beat former Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, to become the state’s first female U.S. senator. Blackburn will vacate a seat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
