House Approves $400 Billion for Defense

WASHINGTON, DC, November 7, 2003 (ENS) - The Defense Authorization Act endorsing $400 billion in defense spending in fiscal year 2004, passed the House of Representatives today by a vote of 362-40. The legislation sets policies, programs, and funding levels for the nation's military.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay announces passage of the Defense Authorization Act today. (Photo courtesy Office of the Majority Leader)

But critics said the measure opens the door to a new wave of global nuclear weapons competition and will permit the deployment of sonar that is harmful to marine mammals.

President George W. Bush commended the House for "showing strong bipartisan support for America's national security, our troops, and their families."

The legislation makes good progress toward "transforming and modernizing our military so that it is best prepared to protect Americans," the President said.

But the Arms Control Association, a nonpartisan membership organization based in Washington, DC, warns that the bill repeals a 10 year old ban on research leading to development of new nuclear weapons with yields of less than five kilotons, so-called "low-yield" weapons.

The move complies with a White House request but is a "serious error that will be a setback to U.S. efforts to persuade and prevent other nations from developing nuclear weapons," the association said.

While supporting research into new "low-yield" nuclear weapons, legislators withheld authorization to engineer, develop, and test new or modified nuclear bombs.

The bill does approve Bush administration proposals to continue researching new types of nuclear "bunker busters" to destroy targets deep underground and shorten the time required to prepare for a full scale nuclear test from 24 months to 18 months.

Earlier this week, lawmakers cut proposed funding for studying bunker busters in half - from $15 million to $7.5 million. They also barred the Department of Energy from spending $4 million of an approved $6 million for new weapon concepts until it submits a report on U.S. nuclear stockpile requirements.

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association (Photo courtesy ACA)

New, smaller nuclear weapons are dangerous and unnecessary, says Dr. Sidney Drell, an award winning physicist and professor emeritus at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center at Stanford University who has been an adviser to the U.S. nuclear program.

"Even a lower yield, one kiloton nuclear warhead - 1/13 the size of the Hiroshima bomb - detonated at a depth of 20-50 feet would eject more than one million cubic feet of radioactive debris, forming a crater about the size of Ground Zero at the World Trade Center," Drell wrote in "Arms Control Today" in March.

The bill passed by the House today establishes a 12 member commission to be known as the Commission on Nuclear Strategy of the United States. The Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the Secretary of Energy, is authorized to enter into a contract with a federally funded research and development center to provide for the organization, management, and suport of the commission.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (Photo courtesy U.S. Army)

The perceived "usability" of nuclear weapons is a dangerous notion, Kimball argued. "Nuclear weapons should not be considered just another weapon in our arsenal. They are mass terror weapons whether used by the United States or another country," he stressed in a statement today.

On land, the spending bill contains a new authorization for the military to participate in mitigation banking, a system for balancing wetland losses against wetland gains, under the Bush administration's no net loss of wetlands policy.

When military activities result in the destruction of a wetland or adverse impact to a wetland, the military may make payments to a wetland mitigation banking program that may be in lieu of mitigating wetland impacts through the creation of a wetland on federal property.

In this process, wetlands are supposed to be restored, improved, or created. Wetlands banking projects are eligible for federal funding support. The "bank" holding the funds has an account manager, which may be an inter-agency committee, that determines wetland "credits" based on the quality or capacity of the newly created or restored wetlands.

The Defense Appropriations bill authorizes $20 million in funding for removal of the Ghost Fleet from the James River, a measure supported by Congresswoman Jo Ann Davis, a Virginia Republican.

Congresswoman Jo Ann Davis with President George W. Bush aboard Air Force One on the way to a military event. (Photo courtesy Office of the Congresswoman)

"Removal of the Ghost Fleet is one of my number one priorities, and this authorization funding of $20 million for FY 2004 is a step towards continuing the progress we have made in 2003," said Davis, who was successful in gettting $31 million appropriated in 2003 for removal of some of the James River Reserve Fleet.

"Last year we were able to get funding to help remove these ships, and just because some of these ships are being disposed of, we cannot stop there. We must get all the ships that pose a danger out of the James, and authorizing this funding is a strong indication that we will continue to be successful this appropriations season," said Davis.

Elsewhere on the high seas, if the bill becomes law, the U.S. Navy will be able to deploy low frequency sonar equipment used to detect submarines that was disallowed by a federal judge in August.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Laporte barred the Navy's planned deployment and ordered the Navy to reduce the system's potential harm to marine mammals and fish by negotiating limits on its use with conservation groups who had sued over its deployment.

According to the Navy's own studies, the Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System Low Frequency Active sonar (LFA), generates sounds up to 140 decibels even more than 300 miles away from the sonar source. Many scientists believe that blasting such intense sounds over large expanses of the ocean could harm entire populations of whales, porpoises and fish. During testing off the California coast, noise from an LFA system was detected across the breadth of the North Pacific Ocean.

An eastern spinner dolphin, one of three dolphin species in the Eastern Tropical Pacific that is recognized as "depleted" under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. (Photo courtesy NOAA)

Karen Wayland, acting legislative director for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which sued to block the sonar system, "Exempting the Pentagon from these laws will allow the military to threaten whales, dolphins and other marine mammals with sonar and underwater explosives, and destroy the habitat of the endangered birds and mammals that live on the 25 million acres it controls across the country - with next to no environmental review.

"An overwhelming majority of Americans believe the Pentagon should comply with our environmental laws. No government agency should be above the law, especially those that protect America's air and water, public health, and endangered wildlife," said Wayland.

Gerald Leape, vice president of the National Environmental Trust, called the exemption measure a "backroom deal" that will "significantly weaken" the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act.

The deal lets military installations bypass the Endangered Species Act by letting the military substitute their own "management plans" with no funding and no dedicated resources," Leape warned.

"Today the Republican Congressional leadership opened gaping new loopholes in two of the nation's bedrock environmental laws," Leape said. "This deal is a crippling blow for marine mammals. It lets the Secretary of Defense bypass these key protections, and appears to trump the recent court decision protecting whales and dolphins from the impacts of navy sonar. Does anybody trust Donald Rumsfeld to save the whales?"