1. Funding for U.S. Efforts to Improve Controls Over Nuclear Weapons, Materials, and Expertise Overseas: A 2009 Update
- Author:
- Matthew Bunn and Andrew Newman
- Publication Date:
- 06-2009
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- The Obama administration is still developing a plan to ensure effective security for all nuclear weapons and weapons-usable nuclear material worldwide within four years, as President Obama outlined in his Prague speech. Because the plan is still in development, the additional funding to implement such an effort was not included in the “steady as you go” fiscal year (FY) 2010 budget request sent to Congress in early May 2009. The $1.3 billion request for programs to improve controls over nuclear weapons, materials, and expertise overseas is essentially the same as the FY 2009 appropriation and $30 million less than the FY 2008 appropriation. The request for all threat reduction programs (including chemical, biological, and missile-related programs as well as nuclear programs) is approximately $1.6 billion, a slight decline from the FY 2009 appropriation. As Kenneth Luongo, president of the Partnership for Global Security, put it in an April 2 press release: “The budget request for FY 2010 needs to be significantly increased across the board if there is any hope of meeting the President's high pri-ority WMD proliferation prevention goals. A stagnant or modestly increased funding profile will be inadequate and amount to business as usual.” If the four-year target is to be achieved, the administration and Congress will need to work together to ensure that these efforts are not slowed by lack of funds.
- Topic:
- Conflict Prevention, Arms Control and Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, and Weapons of Mass Destruction
- Political Geography:
- United States