Republicans Move to Strip Away Nuclear Test Ban Funding

[DonViejo]

Experts say a bill filed by Sen. Tom Cotton would trigger similar actions by other nuclear-weapon states—and undermine U.S. national security.

DAVID AXE

02.13.17 1:03 AM ET

Two close congressional allies of President Donald Trump have proposed to defund the international organization that monitors and helps to prevent nuclear-weapons tests.

S. 332, the bill filed by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), would “restrict funding for the preparatory commission for the comprehensive nuclear-test-ban treaty.” Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina, also a Republican, has proposed a companion resolution.

The effect of the bill, were it to become law, would be to strip away potentially all of the roughly $30 million the United States provides annually to the Vienna-based Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, which employs 260 people from 70 countries. The U.S. contribution accounts for around a quarter of the commission’s yearly budget.

The commission runs a global network of 337 nuclear monitoring stations to help enforce the treaty’s ban on atomic explosions. The ban “makes it very difficult for countries to develop nuclear bombs for the first time, or for countries that already have them, to make more powerful bombs,” the commission explains on its website. “It also prevents the huge damage caused by radioactivity from nuclear explosions to humans, animals and plants.”

“Any move by the United States toward reducing commitment to the CTBT or resuming nuclear testing would without doubt trigger similar actions in other nuclear weapon states,” Hans Kristensen, the director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists in New York City, told The Daily Beast. “Such a development would undermine U.S. national security and international efforts to restrain nuclear weapons development.”

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/02/13/republicans-move-to-strip-away-nuclear-test-ban-funding.html

[riversedge]

1. #wth!! Republicans have been harping about immigraation and nat. security and now

they want to defund our monitoring!! whow. just whow.

[yeoman6987]

2. We pay 25 percent of the total budget? Why?

I think cutting it and have other countries cough up some more would be the way to go. It seems like we pay for NATO, UN and now this committee at a high percentage.divide total by number of countries part of it and be done.