No New Nuke Cash: Perhaps a Bake Sale

The House Appropriations subcommittee that controls the U.S. nuclear weapons complex's funding voted yesterday to eliminate all money that would have paid for engineering and cost studies for the new nuclear warhead that the Bush administration hoped to put in production in 2012.

In taking that action, subcommittee Chairman Peter J. Visclosky (D-Pa.) said there would be funding for the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program "only when a future nuclear weapons strategy is established." In so doing, he echoed a call for such a study that was included in the fiscal 2008 Defense Authorization Bill, which passed the House last week.