[Peace-discuss] good news for a change

[ppatton at uiuc.edu]

Congress Rejects New Nuclear Weapons Funds

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Congress denied the Bush 
administration funds to study a new generation of nuclear 
weapons, omitting the money from a huge mop-up spending bill 
it passed over the weekend, lawmakers said on Monday.

	 

The final $388 billion spending bill did not include the 
$36.6 million President Bush (news - web sites) sought to 
study so-called bunker-busting nuclear weapons that would be 
used to destroy underground facilities as well as smaller 
nuclear arms with half the power of the bomb dropped on 
Hiroshima.

The White House said it had no plans to build such weapons, 
but wanted to keep the door open to their development to deal 
with emerging threats.

Democrats said just considering the weapons takes nuclear 
warfare out of the realm of the unthinkable and encourages 
adversaries of the United States to develop such weapons.

Pressed by Rep. David Hobson (news, bio, voting record), an 
Ohio Republican who chairs the House of Representatives 
subcommittee that oversees nuclear weapons spending, Senate 
and House negotiators backed the House position to omit the 
money from the huge spending package that Congress passed 
over the weekend.

"If we are to convince other countries to forego nuclear 
weapons, we cannot be preparing to build an entire new 
generation of nuclear weapons here in the U.S.," said Rep. Ed 
Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat.

Markey said this "should send a strong signal to the Bush 
administration to drop this weapon from next year's budget 
request."

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Dr. Paul Patton
Research Scientist
Beckman Institute  Rm 3027  405 N. Mathews St.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign  Urbana, Illinois 61801
work phone: (217)-265-0795   fax: (217)-244-5180
home phone: (217)-344-5812
homepage: http://netfiles.uiuc.edu/ppatton/www/index.html

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.  It is the
source of all true art and science."
-Albert Einstein
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