SUMMARY

On May 15, the House of Representatives will vote on three separate amendments as part of the war supplemental funding package. The never-enacted Fiscal Year (FY) 2008 Military Construction-Veterans Administration Appropriations bill (HR 2642) will be used as a legislative vehicle for the supplemental. The previous contents of HR 2642 will be stripped out, and three separate amendments will be offered for three separate votes.

The supplemental would provide $100.1 billion in FY2008 funding for ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, of which $96.6 billion is for the Department of Defense (DOD) and $3.5 billion is for the State Department, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), military construction, and Veterans Administration (VA). The supplemental would also provide $68.3 billion in FY2009 funding, of which $65.9 billion is for DOD and $2.4 billion is for State/USAID.

Thus, the supplemental would provide $168.4 billion in combined FY2008 and FY2009 funding for operations related to Iraq and Afghanistan.

If this $168.4 billion supplemental is enacted into law, Congress will have approved approximately $864 billion in DOD, State/USAID, and VA funding for the Global War on Terror (GWOT) since 2001. This would cement Iraq and Afghanistan's place as the second costliest conflict in U.S. history.

For more information, visit the Center's Iraq-Afghanistan supplemental funding resource center.

OVERVIEW OF SUPPLEMENTAL PACKAGE

Amendment #1 – Provides $162.6 billion in DOD funding for ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Amendment #2 – Attaches multiple policy restrictions, including:

• 18 month withdrawal goal – Mandates that U.S. forces begin withdrawing from Iraq within 30 days, with a goal of completing withdrawal by December 2009
• Contractor restrictions – Expands current law to make all contractors working in war zones subject to prosecution for offenses that would otherwise be in violation of U.S. law
• Unit readiness – Prohibits the deployment to Iraq of any combat unit not deemed "fully mission capable"
• Deployment time – Restricts combat deployments to 12 months for the Army and 7 months for the Marine Corps
• Dwell time – Requires that Army units get at least 12 months, and Marine Corps units get at least 7 months, of "dwell time" between combat deployments
• Torture – Provides that no person in U.S. custody may be subjected to treatment not authorized by the U.S. Army Field Manual on Human Intelligence Collector Operations
• Permanent bases and oil – Prohibits funding for permanent bases or control of Iraqi oil resources
• Long-term agreement – Prohibits the President from entering into any agreement with Iraq, including a security assurance pact, unless the agreement is sent as a treaty to the Senate for advice and consent, or is specifically authorized by Congress
• Iraqi reconstruction spending – Prohibits spending on Iraqi training, capacity building, construction, and infrastructure unless the Iraqi government matches U.S. expenditures dollar-for-dollar
• Iraq fuel subsidies – Requires the President to complete an agreement that requires Iraq to subsidize fuel costs for U.S. armed forces operating in Iraq

Amendment #3 – Provides $21.2 billion in funding for military construction, Veterans Administration, State/USAID operations abroad, and domestic programs like the GI veterans' education benefits. Of this $21.2 billion, approximately $5.9 billion is for expenditures related to Iraq and Afghanistan ($3.5 billion for FY2008, $2.4 billion for FY2009). Amendment #3 would fund the following Iraq-Afghanistan focused activities:

• Diplomatic operations, including embassy security and construction
• Inspectors General at State Department and USAID, as well as the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR)
• UN Assistance Missions in Iraq and Afghanistan
• USAID operations in Iraq and Afghanistan
• Economic Support Fund (ESF) assistance
• Democracy and legal governance development, counternarcotics, and refugee assistance
• Presidential protection in Afghanistan and de-mining activities in Iraq

BACKGROUND: FY 2008 & FY 2009 WAR FUNDING

In December 2007, Congress approved $86.8 billion in "bridge" FY2008 war-related funding for DOD as part of the FY2008 Consolidated Appropriations Act (HR 2764/PL 110-161). With enactment of this "bridge" fund, $102.5 billion in pending FY2008 war-related funding for DOD remains to be acted upon by Congress in 2008.

For FY2009, the Bush administration submitted a placeholder $70 billion "bridge" emergency supplemental war funding request alongside its "base" FY2009 national defense (Function 050) request of $542.5 billion. In May 2008, the administration provided a detailed overview of its $70 billion FY2009 request. This $70 billion will not be enough to fund Global War on Terror (GWOT) operations throughout all of FY2009, but it will fund operations into 2009, when the next President takes office.

HIGHLIGHTS (AMENDMENT #1)

Iraqi and Afghan Security Forces – Provides $2.5 billion in total funding ($1.5 billion FY2008 + $1.0 billion FY2009) for Iraqi Security Forces. Provides $3.4 billion in total funding ($1.4 billion FY2008 + $2.0 billion FY2009) for Afghan Security Forces.

Commander's Emergency Response Program (CERP) – Provides $1.0 billion in FY2008 funding for CERP, of which $480 million is for Afghanistan and $2 million is to fight terrorism in the Philippines.

Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO) – Provides $2.0 billion in FY2009 funding for JIEDDO.

C-17 Transport Aircraft – Includes $3.6 billion in FY2008 funding for the purchase of 15 C-17 transports for the Air Force. This funding was not requested by the administration. The supplemental report language says that DOD "has not adequately assessed strategic lift requirements" in light of planned increases in Army and Marine Corps end-strengths and the emerging lift needs of Future Combat Systems.

Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles (MRAP) – Provides $1.7 billion in FY2009 funding, the amount requested by the administration, for MRAP ballistic testing, sustainment, and transportation. The supplemental report language stipulates that future MRAP sustainment requests must be included in DOD's "base" budget starting with the FY2010 request.

Army Vehicles – Provides $1.3 billion in total funding ($921 million FY2008 + $394.8 million FY2009) for Bradley Fighting Vehicles; $2.2 billion in total funding ($2.0 billion FY2008 + $248.1 million FY2009) for Stryker Vehicles; $1.9 billion in total funding ($1.5 billion FY2008 + $390.2 million FY2009) for Humvees; and $2.4 billion in total funding ($2.3 billion FY2008 + $90.0 million FY2009) for the Family of Heavy Tactical Vehicles.

Aircraft – Provides $768 million in FY2008 funding for 13 Navy F/A-18E/F Hornets; $602 million in FY2008 funding for 9 Navy KC-130Js; $141 million in FY2008 funding for 2 Navy V-22 Ospreys and $301 million in FY2008 funding for Air Force V-22 Ospreys, for a total of $442 million; and $1.8 billion in FY2008 funding for 18 C-130Js and 7 MC-130Js. No funding was provided for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, although the administration requested $230 million in FY2008 funding for 1 aircraft.

DOD FUNDING PROVISIONS (AMENDMENT #1)

Total Funding (DOD only)
FY2008 Already Provided (December 2007 Bridge): $86.8 billion
FY2008 Remaining Request: $102.5 billion
FY2009 Bridge Request: $65.9 billion
Amount in House Supplemental Package: $96.6 billion (FY2008) + $65.9 (FY2009) = $162.6 billion total

Personnel
FY2008 Already Provided (December 2007 Bridge): $1.1 billion
FY2008 Remaining Request: $16.8 billion
FY2009 Bridge Request: $3.8 billion
Amount in House Supplemental Package: $17.6 billion (FY2008) + $1.2 billion (FY2009) = $18.8 billion total

Operations & Maintenance (O&M)
FY2008 Already Provided (December 2007 Bridge): $57.6 billion
FY2008 Remaining Request: $34.9 billion
FY2009 Bridge Request: $51.1 billion
Amount in House Supplemental Package: $33.2 billion (FY2008) + $54.9 billion (FY2009) = $88.1 billion total

Procurement
FY2008 Already Provided (December 2007 Bridge): $27.2 billion
FY2008 Remaining Request: $44.4 billion
FY2009 Bridge Request: $8.5 billion
Amount in House Supplemental Package: $41.0 billion (FY2008) + $4.4 billion (FY2009) = $45.4 billion total

Research, Development, Testing & Evaluation (RDT&E)
FY2008 Already Provided (December 2007 Bridge): none
FY2008 Remaining Request: $2.9 billion
FY2009 Bridge Request: $379 million
Amount in House Supplemental Package: $1.6 billion (FY2008) + $387.8 million (FY2009) = $2.0 billion total

Military Construction
FY2008 Already Provided (December 2007 Bridge): none
FY2008 Remaining Request: $2.4 billion
FY2009 Bridge Request: none
Amount in House Supplemental Package: $4.6 billion (includes $1.4 billion for BRAC) = $4.6 billion total (provided in Amendment #3)

Revolving and Management Funds
FY2008 Already Provided (December 2007 Bridge): $1 billion
FY2008 Remaining Request: $962.8 million
FY2009 Bridge Request: $2.2 billion
Amount in House Supplemental Package: $1.8 billion (FY2008) + none (FY2009) = $1.8 billion total

OTHER DOD PROGRAMS OF INTEREST

Defense Health Program (O&M)
FY2008 Already Provided (December 2007 Bridge): $575.7 million
FY2008 Remaining Request: $561.7 million
FY2009 Bridge Request: $400 million (under "Medical Support Fund")
Amount in House Supplemental Package: $1.4 billion (FY2008) + $1.1 billion (FY2009) = $2.5 billion total

Drug Interdiction and Counter-Drug Activities (O&M)
FY2008 Already Provided (December 2007 Bridge): $192.6 million
FY2008 Remaining Request: $65.0 million
FY2009 Bridge Request: $130 million
Amount in House Supplemental Package: $65.3 million (FY2008) + $188 million (FY2009) = $253.3 million total

Iraq Freedom Fund (O&M)
FY2008 Already Provided (December 2007 Bridge): $3.7 billion
FY2008 Remaining Request: $103.8 million
FY2009 Bridge Request: none
Amount in House Supplemental Package: $50 million (FY2008) + none (FY2009) = $50 million total

Commander's Emergency Response Program (O&M)
FY2008 Already Provided (December 2007 Bridge): $500 million
FY2008 Remaining Request: $719.4 million
FY2009 Bridge Request: $1.7 billion
Amount in House Supplemental Package: $1.0 billion (FY2008) + none (FY2009) = $1.0 billion total

Afghanistan Security Forces Fund (O&M)
FY2008 Already Provided (December 2007 Bridge): $1.35 billion
FY2008 Remaining Request: $1.35 billion
FY2009 Bridge Request: $3.7 billion
Amount in House Supplemental Package: $1.4 billion (FY2008) + $2.0 billion (FY2009) = $3.4 billion total

Iraq Security Forces Fund (O&M)
FY2008 Already Provided (December 2007 Bridge): $1.5 billion
FY2008 Remaining Request: $1.5 billion
FY2009 Bridge Request: $2.0 billion
Amount in House Supplemental Package: $1.5 billion (FY2008) + $1.0 billion (FY2009) = $2.5 billion total

Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization (JIEDDO) (Procurement)
FY2008 Already Provided (December 2007 Bridge): $4.3 billion
FY2008 Remaining Request: none
FY2009 Bridge Request: $3.0 billion
Amount in House Supplemental Package: none (FY2008) + $2.0 billion (FY2009) = $2.0 billion total

MAJOR WEAPONS SYSTEMS (AMENDMENT #1)

ARMY

ARH-70 Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter
FY2008 Already Provided (December 2007 Bridge): none
FY2008 Remaining Request: $222.6 million for 29 aircraft
FY2009 Bridge Request: none
Amount in House Supplemental Package: none (FY2008) + none (FY2009) = none

UH-60 Blackhawk Helicopters (multiyear procurement)
FY2008 Already Provided (December 2007 Bridge): $483.3 million for 36 aircraft
FY2008 Remaining Request: $44.1 million for 3 aircraft
FY2009 Bridge Request: none
Amount in House Supplemental Package: $44.7 million for modifications (FY2008) + none (FY2009) = $44.7 million total

Bradley Fighting Vehicles
FY2008 Already Provided (December 2007 Bridge): $700.1 million for 235 vehicles
FY2008 Remaining Request: $921.0 million for 308 vehicles
FY2009 Bridge Request: none
Amount in House Supplemental Package: $921 million (FY2008) + $394.8 million (FY2009) = $1.3 billion total

Stryker Vehicles
FY2008 Already Provided (December 2007 Bridge): $41 million for 10 vehicles
FY2008 Remaining Request: $2.0 billion for 473 vehicles
FY2009 Bridge Request: none
Amount in House Supplemental Package: $2.0 billion (FY2008) + $248.1 million (FY2009) = $2.2 billion total

High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles "Humvee"
FY2008 Already Provided (December 2007 Bridge): $455 million for 2,409 vehicles
FY2008 Remaining Request: $1.6 billion for 8,469 vehicles
FY2009 Bridge Request: none
Amount in House Supplemental Package: $1.5 billion (FY2008) + $390.2 million (FY2009) = $1.9 billion total

Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles
FY2008 Already Provided (December 2007 Bridge): $146 million for 765 vehicles
FY2008 Remaining Request: $2.7 billion for 14,103 vehicles
FY2009 Bridge Request: none
Amount in House Supplemental Package: $673.6 million (FY2008) + none (FY2009) = $673.6 million total

Family of Heavy Tactical Vehicles
FY2008 Already Provided (December 2007 Bridge): $427 million for 799 vehicles
FY2008 Remaining Request: $2.4 billion for 4,506 vehicles
FY2009 Bridge Request: none
Amount in House Supplemental Package: $2.3 billion (FY2008) + $90.0 million (FY2009) = $2.4 billion total

NAVY

F/A-18E/F Hornet Fighters (multiyear procurement)
FY2008 Already Provided (December 2007 Bridge): none
FY2008 Remaining Request: $768.0 million for 13 aircraft
FY2009 Bridge Request: none
Amount in House Supplemental Package: $768.0 million for 13 aircraft (FY2008) + none (FY2009) = $768.0 million total

KC-130J Refueling/Transport Aircraft
FY2008 Already Provided (December 2007 Bridge): none
FY2008 Remaining Request: $495.4 million for 17 aircraft
FY2009 Bridge Request: none
Amount in House Supplemental Package: $602.4 million for 9 aircraft (FY2008) + none (FY2009) = $602.4 million total

V-22 Osprey
FY2008 Already Provided (December 2007 Bridge): none
FY2008 Remaining Request: $140.5 million for 2 Navy aircraft
FY2009 Bridge Request: none
Amount in House Supplemental Package: $140.5 million for 2 Navy aircraft (FY2008) + none (FY2009) = $140.5 million total

AIR FORCE

F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF)
FY2008 Already Provided (December 2007 Bridge): none
FY2008 Remaining Request: $230 million for 1 aircraft
FY2009 Bridge Request: none
Amount in House Supplemental Package: none (FY2008) + none (FY2009) = none

C-17 Airlift Aircraft
FY2008 Already Provided (December 2007 Bridge): none
FY2008 Remaining Request: none
FY2009 Bridge Request: none
Amount in House Supplemental Package: $3.6 billion for 15 aircraft (FY2008) + none (FY2009) = $3.6 billion total

C-130J Transport Aircraft
FY2008 Already Provided (December 2007 Bridge): none
FY2008 Remaining Request: $1.4 billion for 17 aircraft
FY2009 Bridge Request: none
Amount in House Supplemental Package: $1.8 billion for 18 C-130J and 7 MC-130J aircraft (FY2008) + none (FY2009) = $1.8 billion total

V-22 Osprey
FY2008 Already Provided (December 2007 Bridge): none
FY2008 Remaining Request: $492.5 million for 5 Air Force aircraft
FY2009 Bridge Request: none
Amount in House Supplemental Package: $300.5 million (FY2008) + none (FY2009) = $300.5 million total

DEFENSE-WIDE

Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles (MRAP)
FY2008 Already Provided (December 2007 Bridge): $16.8 billion
FY2008 Remaining Request: none
FY2009 Bridge Request: $2.6 billion
Amount in House Supplemental Package: none (FY2008) + $1.7 billion (FY2009) = $1.7 billion total

SOURCES

Office of Management and Budget, Fiscal Year (FY) 2009 Global War on Terror Bridge Request (released May 2, 2008).
Office of the Secretary of Defense, Fiscal Year (FY) 2008 Global War on Terror Pending Request (updated February 2008).
Text and explanatory statements, Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2008 (released May 14, 2008).

It is well-known that al-Qaida considers it a religious duty to acquire a nuclear weapon, and its spokes-person has claimed the right to kill 4 million Americans. During the 2004 presidential election, both candidates agreed that the greatest threat to U.S. security is nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists.

Yet this threat is being dealt with as a routine matter.

It seems unlikely that terrorists could obtain a usable nuclear weapon from any of the nine countries that currently possess them, although there is some concern that a possible source could be the Pakistani stockpile, should that unstable country implode.

It is more likely that terrorists could obtain the key ingredient for making a nuclear bomb, plutonium (Pu) or highly enriched uranium (HEU).

While producing a weapon with Pu is a relatively complex task, there is consensus in the scientific community that it would not be difficult for a terrorist group to produce an explosive device similar to the one used on Hiroshima, with as little as 50 pounds of HEU.

The International Panel on Fissile Materials estimated in its 2007 report that there are 1,400-2,000 tons of HEU, enough for some 56,000-80,000 nuclear weapons, spread around the world.

Much of the HEU is in Russia and the states of the former Soviet Union, known to have weak security regulations and widespread corruption.

In April 2006, Russian police arrested the foreman of a nuclear plant for attempting to sell about 50 pounds of HEU, enough for a weapon.

Of at least equal if not greater concern is what Princeton professor Frank von Hippel calls significant quantities of HEU in some 140 locations around the world in research and medical isotope production reactors and in associated fuel development and fabrication facilities, many with only minimum security.

Dr. Matthew Bunn of Harvard University has warned that these materials are in hundreds of buildings in dozens of countries; some sites have reliable safety measures, but many are secured only by a chain-link fence.

Some 20 developing countries, including Belarus, Ghana and Uganda, have more than a weapon's worth of HEU.

Should a terrorist obtain HEU, detection of it would be extremely difficult, as this material can be easily shielded and transported.

It would be a relatively simple matter to smuggle the material into the United States, where it could be fashioned into a crude but deadly nuclear weapon in a garage with tools purchased in a hardware store.

The only feasible way to deny terrorists access to fissile materials to make nuclear weapons is to remove, consolidate and store unneeded HEU and Pu and provide tight security for the remainder of the sites.

Cooperative programs with Russia have been under way at a leisurely pace for 16 years and are only a little more than half complete. It was not until 2004 that the U.S. energy secretary announced the Global Threat Reduction Initiative to recover and secure HEU, but many facilities are not included.

Former Sen. Sam Nunn, currently co-chair of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, stated less than a year ago, "At the current pace, it will be several decades before this material is adequately secured or eliminated globally."

It is incredible that our government is failing to accord the highest priority to taking the actions necessary to prevent terrorists from carrying out their threat to detonate a nuclear weapon on the territory of the United States, which would forever change our way of life.

And where is the clamor from the body politic?

Following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 the United States embarked upon a global war against an enemy unlike any it had faced before. In drafting a new strategy to defeat the threat of international terrorism, the United States adopted several controversial and widely criticized policies. The Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba is undoubtedly the most notorious.

The base at Guantanamo Bay has imprisoned over 750 enemy combatants and suspected terrorists since 2002. It has come under significant international scrutiny due to reports of detainees being held without charge, receiving unfair trials, suffering through questionable interrogation tactics, and being forcibly relocated to countries with poor human rights records. Amnesty International has labeled Guantanamo "the gulag of our times."

Recent remarks from five former U. S. Secretaries of State have opened a much-needed domestic debate over its status. Colin Powell was joined by Henry Kissinger, James Baker III, Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright in calling for its closure. Declaring the infamous prison a "blot on us," the former high-powered government officials argued that the prison undermines American legitimacy internationally.

Senators John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama have all called for Guantanamo to be shut down. The United Nations Committee Against Torture, as well as the governments of Britain, France and Germany, have also called for the closure as well. Yet, as of March 2008, approximately 280 detainees were still being held there.

American legislative initiatives have added fuel to the fire. Most notably, the Military Commissions Act, passed in 2006 under the leadership Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, changed both the definition of "unlawful enemy combatant" and the rights afforded to Guantanamo detainees.

Under international humanitarian law, "unlawful enemy combatant" is defined as a person who directly participates in hostilities. However, the Military Commissions Act widened the definition to also include any person "who purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States or its co-belligerents who is not a lawful enemy combatant," as well as any person designated by a competent tribunal.

Two problems immediately arise from this change. First, the Military Commissions Act definition expands the list of possible targets and detainees to include people who would have been considered civilians under previous law, such as support personnel on military bases. Second, the law seems to give the president or secretary of defense the authority to designate anyone an unlawful enemy combatant, as long as they convene a "competent tribunal" in making that designation.

The major concern here is the restriction of habeas corpus, the right through which a person can seek relief from unlawful detention. Under the Military Commissions Act, Guantanamo Bay detainees cannot file lawsuits challenging their detention. This is significant, as habeas corpus is considered a fundamental constitutional right and is granted even to non-U. S. citizens. Even more alarming, under the broadened definition of unlawful enemy combatant, the law allows those conventionally defined as "civilians" to be stripped of their lawful right to habeas corpus.

It is no surprise then that the Military Commissions Act presents a significant threat to American legitimacy abroad. Great Britain, one of America's closest allies, has already challenged the United States over the fate of Binyan Mohamed, a British resident the United States is holding indefinitely at Guantanamo on terrorism-related charges.

In redefining the laws of war, the United States has overridden long-established international human rights law enshrined in United Nations detainment policies. The Military Commissions Act has caused a significant backlash abroad, alienating U. S. allies in the global war on terror. At a time when the United States is trying to regain the trust of its allies by adopting a more multilateral approach, it would be in America's best interest to return to the internationally accepted definition of unlawful enemy combatants and to grant detainees the legal rights reserved under that definition.

Colleen Garcia and Michele Zilka are researchers at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.

Plans are afoot to reuse spent reactor fuel in the U.S. But the advantages of the scheme pale in comparison with its dangers

By Frank N. von Hippel

Although a dozen years have elapsed since any new nuclear power reactor has come online in the U.S., there are now stirrings of a nuclear renaissance. The incentives are certainly in place: the costs of natural gas and oil have skyrocketed; the public increasingly objects to the greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels; and the federal government has offered up to $8 billion in subsidies and insurance against delays in licensing (with new laws to streamline the process) and $18.5 billion in loan guarantees. What more could the moribund nuclear power industry possibly want?

Just one thing: a place to ship its used reactor fuel. Indeed, the lack of a disposal site remains a dark cloud hanging over the entire enterprise. The projected opening of a federal waste storage repository in Yucca Mountain in Nevada (now anticipated for 2017 at the earliest) has already slipped by two decades, and the cooling pools holding spent fuel at the nation’s nuclear power plants are running out of space.

Most nuclear utilities are therefore beginning to store older spent fuel on dry ground in huge casks, each typically containing 10 tons of waste. Every year a 1,000-megawatt reactor discharges enough fuel to fill two of these casks, each costing about $1 million. But that is not all the industry is doing. U.S. nuclear utilities are suing the federal government, because they would not have incurred such expenses had the U.S. Department of Energy opened the Yucca Mountain repository in 1998 as originally planned. As a result, the government is paying for the casks and associated infrastructure and operations—a bill that is running about $300 million a year.

Under pressure to start moving the fuel off the sites, the DOE has returned to an idea that it abandoned in the 1970s—to “reprocess” the spent fuel chemically, separating the different elements so that some can be reused. Vast reprocessing plants have been running in France and the U.K. for more than a decade, and Japan began to operate its own $20-billion facility in 2006. So this strategy is not without precedent. But, as I discuss below, reprocessing is an expensive and dangerous road to take.

The Element from HellGrasping my reasons for rejecting nuclear fuel reprocessing requires nothing more than a rudimentary understanding of the nuclear fuel cycle and a dollop of common sense. Power reactors generate heat—which makes steam to turn electricity-generating turbines—by maintaining a nuclear chain reaction that splits (or “fissions”) atoms. Most of the time the fuel is uranium, artificially enriched so that 4 to 5 percent is the chain-reacting isotope uranium 235; virtually all the rest is uranium 238. At an enrichment of only 5 percent, stolen reactor fuel cannot be used to construct an illicit atom bomb.

In the reactor, some of the uranium 238 absorbs a neutron and becomes plutonium 239, which is also chain-reacting and can in principle be partially “burned” if it is extracted and properly prepared. This approach has various drawbacks, however. One is that extraction and processing cost much more than the new fuel is worth. Another is that recycling the plutonium reduces the waste problem only minimally. Most important, the separated plutonium can readily serve to make nuclear bombs if it gets into the wrong hands; as a result, much effort has to be expended to keep it secure until it is once more a part of spent fuel.

These drawbacks become strikingly clear when one examines the experiences of the nations that have embarked on reprocessing programs. In France, the world leader in reprocessing technology, the separated plutonium (chemically combined with oxygen to form plutonium dioxide) is mixed with uranium 238 (also as an oxide) to make a “mixed oxide,” or MOX, fuel. After being used to generate more power, the spent MOX fuel still contains about 70 percent as much plutonium as when it was manufactured; however, the addition of highly radioactive fission products created inside a reactor makes this plutonium difficult to access and make into a bomb. The used MOX fuel is shipped back to the reprocessing facility for indefinite storage. Thus, France is, in effect, using reprocessing to move its problem with spent fuel from the reactor sites to the reprocessing plant.

Japan is following France’s example. The U.K. and Russia simply store their separated civilian plutonium—about 120 tons between them as of the end of 2005, enough to make 15,000 atom bombs.

Until recently, France, Russia and the U.K. earned money by reprocessing the spent fuel of other nations, such as Japan and Germany, where domestic antinuclear activists demanded that the government either show it had a solution for dealing with spent fuel or shut down its reactors. Authorities in these nations found that sending their spent fuel abroad for reprocessing was a convenient, if costly, way to deal with their nuclear wastes—at least temporarily.

With such contracts in hand, France and the U.K. were easily able to finance new plants for carrying out reprocessing. Those agreements specified, however, that the separated plutonium and any highly radioactive waste would later go back to the country of origin. Russia has recently adopted a similar policy. Hence, governments that send spent fuel abroad need eventually to arrange storage sites for the returning radioactive waste. That reality took a while to sink in, but it has now convinced almost all nations that bought foreign reprocessing services that they might as well store their spent fuel and save the reprocessing fee of about $1 million per ton (10 times the cost of dry storage casks).

So France, Russia and the U.K. have lost virtually all their foreign customers. One result is that the U.K. plans to shut down its reprocessing plants within the next few years, a move that comes with a $92-billion price tag for cleaning up the site of these facilities. In 2000 France considered the option of ending reprocessing in 2010 and concluded that doing so would reduce the cost of nuclear electricity. Making such a change, though, might also engender acrimonious debates about nuclear waste—the last thing the French nuclear establishment wants in a country that has seen relatively little antinuclear activism.

Japan is even more politically locked into reprocessing: its nuclear utilities, unlike those of the U.S., have been unable to obtain permission to expand their on-site storage. Russia today has just a single reprocessing plant, with the ability to handle the spent fuel from only 15 percent of that country’s nuclear reactors. The Soviets had intended to expand their reprocessing capabilities but abandoned those plans when their economy collapsed in the 1980s.

During the cold war, the U.S. operated reprocessing plants in Washington State and South Carolina to recover plutonium for nuclear weapons. More than half of the approximately 100 tons of plutonium that was separated in those efforts has been declared to be in excess of our national needs, and the DOE currently projects that disposing of it will cost more than $15 billion. The people who were working at the sites where this reprocessing took place are now primarily occupied with cleaning up the resulting mess, which is expected to cost around $100 billion.

In addition to those military operations, a small commercial reprocessing facility operated in upstate New York from 1966 to 1972. It separated 1.5 tons of plutonium before going bankrupt and becoming a joint federal-state cleanup venture, one projected to require about $5 billion of taxpayers’ money.

With all the problems reprocessing entailed, one might rightly ask why it was pursued at all. Part of the answer is that for years after civilian nuclear power plants were first introduced, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) promoted reprocessing both domestically and abroad as essential to the future of nuclear power, because the industry was worried about running out of uranium (a concern that has since abated).

But that was before the security risks of plutonium production went from theoretical to real. In 1974 India, one of the countries that the U.S. assisted in acquiring reprocessing capabilities, used its first separated plutonium to build a nuclear weapon. At about this time, the late Theodore B. Taylor, a former U.S. nuclear weapons designer, was raising an alarm about the possibility that the planned separation and recycling of thousands of tons of plutonium every year would allow terrorists to steal enough of this material to make one or more nuclear bombs.

Separated plutonium, being only weakly radioactive, is easily carried off—whereas the plutonium in spent fuel is mixed with fission products that emit lethal gamma rays. Because of its great radioactivity, spent fuel can be transported only inside casks weighing tens of tons, and its plutonium can only be recovered with great difficulty, typically behind thick shielding using sophisticated, remotely operated equipment. So unseparated plutonium in spent fuel poses a far smaller risk of ending up in the wrong hands.

Having been awakened by India to the danger of nuclear weapons proliferation through reprocessing, the Ford administration (and later the Carter administration) reexamined the AEC’s position and concluded that reprocessing was both unnecessary and uneconomic. The U.S. government therefore abandoned its plans to reprocess the spent fuel from civilian reactors and urged France and Germany to cancel contracts under which they were exporting reprocessing technology to Pakistan, South Korea and Brazil.

The Reagan administration later reversed the Ford-Carter position on domestic reprocessing, but the U.S. nuclear industry was no longer interested. It, too, had concluded that reprocessing to make use of the recovered plutonium would not be economically competitive with the existing “once-through” fueling system. Reprocessing, at least in the U.S., had reached a dead end, or so it seemed.

Rising from Nuclear AshesThe current Bush administration has recently breathed life back into the idea of reprocessing spent nuclear fuel as part of its proposal to deploy a new generation of nuclear reactors. According to this vision, transuranics (plutonium and other similarly heavy elements extracted from conventional reactor fuel) would be recycled not once but repeatedly in the new reactors to break them down through fission into lighter elements, most of which have shorter half-lives. Consequently, the amount of nuclear waste needing to be safely stored for many millennia would be reduced [see “Smarter Use of Nuclear Waste,” by William H. Hannum, Gerald E. Marsh and George S. Stanford; Scientific American, December 2005]. Some scientists view this new scheme as “technically sweet,” to borrow a phrase J. Robert Oppen­heimer once used to describe the design for the hydrogen bomb. But is it really so wise?

The proposal to recycle U.S. spent fuel in this way is not new. Indeed, in the mid-1990s the DOE asked the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to carry out a study of this approach to reducing the amount of long-lived radioactive waste. The resulting massive report, Nuclear Wastes: Technologies for Separation and Transmutation, was very negative. The NAS panel concluded that recycling the transuranics in the first 62,000 tons of spent fuel (the amount that otherwise would have been stored in Yucca Mountain) would require “no less than $50 billion and easily could be over $100 billion”—in other words, it could well cost something like $500 for every person in the U.S. These numbers would have to be doubled to deal with the entire amount of spent fuel that existing U.S. reactors are expected to discharge during their lifetimes.

Why so expensive? Because conventional reactors could not be employed. Those use water both for cooling and for slowing down the neutrons given off when the uranium nuclei in the fuel break apart; this slowing allows the neutrons to induce other uranium 235 atoms to split, thereby sustaining a nuclear chain reaction. Feeding recycled fuel into such a reactor causes the heavier transuranics (plutonium 242, americium and curium) to accumulate. The proposed solution is a completely different type of nuclear reactor, one in which the neutrons get slowed less and are therefore able to break down these hard-to-crack atoms.

During the 1960s and 1970s the leading industrial countries, including the U.S., put the equivalent of more than 50 billion of today’s dollars into efforts to commercialize such fast-­neutron reactors, which are cooled by molten sodium rather than water. These devices were also called breeder reactors, because they were designed to generate more plutonium than they consumed and therefore could be much more efficient in using the energy in uranium. The expectation was that breeders would quickly replace conventional water-cooled reactors. But sodium-cooled reactors proved to be much more costly to build and troublesome to operate than expected, and most countries abandoned their efforts to commercialize them.

It is exactly this failed reactor type that the DOE now proposes to develop and deploy—but with its core reconfigured to be a net plutonium burner rather than a breeder. The U.S. would have to build between 40 and 75 1,000-megawatt reactors of this type to be able to break down transuranics at the rate they are being generated in the nation’s 104 conventional reactors. If each of the new sodium-cooled reactors cost $1 billion to $2 billion more than one of its water-cooled cousins of the same capacity, the federal subsidy necessary would be anywhere from $40 billion to $150 billion, in addition to the $100 billion to $200 billion required for building and operating the recycling infrastructure. Given the U.S. budget deficit, it seems unlikely that such a program would actually be carried through.

If a full-scale reprocessing plant were constructed (as the DOE until recently was proposing to do by 2020) but the sodium-cooled reactors did not get built, virtually all the separated transuranics would simply go into indefinite storage. This awkward situation is exactly what befell the U.K., where the reprocessing program, started in the 1960s, has produced about 80 tons of separated plutonium, a legacy that will cost tens of billions of dollars to dispose of safely.

Reprocessing spent fuel and then storing the separated plutonium and radioactive waste indefinitely at the reprocessing plant is not a disposal strategy. Rather it is a strategy for disaster, because it makes the separated plutonium much more vulnerable to theft. In a 1998 report the U.K.’s Royal Society (the equivalent of the NAS), commenting on the growing stockpile of civilian plutonium in that country, warned that “the chance that the stocks of plutonium might, at some stage, be accessed for illicit weapons production is of extreme concern.” In 2007 a second Royal Society report reiterated that “the status quo of continuing to stockpile a very dangerous material is not an acceptable long-term option.”

Clearly, prudence demands that plutonium should not be stored at a reprocessing facility in a form that could readily be stolen. Indeed, common sense dictates that it should not be separated at all. Until a long-term repository is available, spent reactor fuel can remain at the sites of the nuclear power plants that generated it.

Would such storage be dangerous? I would argue that keeping older fuel produced by the once-through system in dry storage casks represents a negligible addition to the existing nuclear hazard to the surrounding population. The 10 kilowatts of radioactive heat generated by the 10 tons of 20-year-old fuel packed in a dry storage cask is carried off convectively as it warms the air around it. Terrorists intent on doing harm might attempt to puncture such a cask using, say, an antitank weapon or the engine of a crashing aircraft, but under most circumstances only a small mass of radioactive fuel fragments would be scattered about a limited area. In contrast, if the coolant in the nearby reactor were cut off, its fuel would overheat and begin releasing huge quantities of vaporized fission products within minutes. And if the water were lost in a storage pool containing spent fuel, the zirconium cladding of the fuel rods would be heated up to ignition temperature within hours. Seen in this light, dry storage casks look pretty benign.

Is there enough physical room to keep them? Yes, there is plenty of space for more casks at U.S. nuclear power plants. Even the oldest operating U.S. reactors are having their licenses extended for another 20 years, and new reactors will likely be built on the same sites. So there is no reason to think that these storage areas are about to disappear. Eventually, of course, it will be necessary to remove the spent fuel and put it elsewhere, but there is no need to panic and adopt a policy of reprocessing, which would only make the situation much more dangerous and costly than it is today.

Fear and Loathing in NevadaThe long-term fate of radioactive waste in the U.S. hinges on how the current impasse over Yucca Mountain is resolved. Opinion on the site is divided. The regulatory requirements are tough: the DOE has to show that the mountain will contain the waste well enough to prevent significant off-site doses for a million years.

Demonstrating safety that far into the future is not easy, but the risks from even a badly designed repository are negligible in comparison with those from a policy that would make nuclear weapons materials more accessible. From this perspective, it is difficult to understand why the danger of local radioactive pollution 100,000 or a million years hence has generated so much more political passion in the U.S. than the continuing imminent danger from nuclear weapons.

Part of the problem is the view in Nevada that the Reagan administration and Congress acted unfairly in 1987 when they cut short an objective evaluation of other candidate sites and designated Yucca Mountain as the location for the future nuclear waste repository. To overcome this perception, it may be necessary to reopen deliberations for choosing an additional site. Such a move should not be difficult. Indeed, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1987 requires the secretary of energy to report to Congress by 2010 on the need for a second storage facility. Given the disastrous record of the DOE in dealing with radioactive waste, however, consideration should also be given to establishing a more specialized and less politicized agency for this purpose.

In the meantime, spent fuel can be safely stored at the reactor sites in dry casks. And even after it is placed in a geologic repository, it would remain retrievable for at least a century. So in the unlikely event that technology or economic circumstances change drastically enough that the benefits of reprocessing exceed the costs and risks, that option would still be available. But it makes no sense now to rush into an expensive and potentially catastrophic undertaking on the basis of uncertain hopes that it might reduce the long-term environmental burden from the nuclear power industry.

Editor's Note: This story was originally printed with the title "Rethinking Nuclear Fuel Recycling"

In the wake of the congressional hearings earlier this month featuring Gen. David Petraeus and Amb. Ryan Crocker, during which al Qaeda was hardly mentioned, it seems clear that Washington has focused its attention on a new nemesis: Iran. The Bush administration and various pro-war pundits have intensified ongoing efforts to tie Iran to violence in Iraq in order to justify maintaining a U.S. military presence in the country, to create a scapegoat for U.S. failures there, and to convince the Iraqi government that Iran is a security threat. This surge of accusations against Iran coincides with a diminishing emphasis on al Qaeda's role in Iraq.

Yet the treatment of Iran as an inherent danger to Iraq is in part an affectation; when it comes to Iraq, the interests of Washington and Tehran actually overlap significantly. Despite this, U.S. efforts toward diplomacy with Iran have been minimal. For starters, the Bush administration has dismissed out of hand overtures from Iran, including one following the invasion of Iraq that would have put everything on the negotiating table, including Iran's nuclear program, recognition of the state of Israel, and stopping support for Hezbollah and Hamas. The Bush administration has maintained that Iran must suspend its nuclear enrichment activities before it will engage in talks with Tehran. This precondition has also been included in joint proposals to Iran offered by the European Union, Russia, and China that involved the United States. But when it comes to authentic diplomacy, preconditions are only a recipe for failure. Furthermore, none of the proposals offered to Iran have included U.S.-backed security assurances that it will not be attacked. Instead, U.S. policy on Iran has been marked by counterproductive threats of military attack, regime change, isolation, and sanctions.

In their testimony, both Petraeus and Crocker focused much of the blame for failures in Iraq on Iran, claiming Tehran has funded, trained, and armed militias in Iraq, and fueled violence against Iraqi security forces, coalition forces, and Iraqi civilians aimed at undermining the Iraqi government. They also repeatedly referred to Iran's "lethal support to the Special Groups" and claimed that these groups "pose the greatest long-term threat to the viability of a democratic Iraq."

Petraeus and Crocker pointed to the March uprisings in Basra and Baghdad as dramatically demonstrating the extent of "Iran's malign influence." By contrast, Petraeus and Crocker claimed that coalition forces have vigorously pursued al Qaeda in Iraq and that the terrorist organization, along with other extremist elements, "have been dealt serious blows." They stated al Qaeda is "in retreat and disarray in Iraq" and the threat it poses "has been significantly reduced," but also conceded it "remains lethal and substantial."

In an April 10 speech, President George W. Bush reaffirmed the Petraeus-Crocker claims and reduced his "axis of evil" trio (Iran, North Korea, and Iraq) to a duo, calling Iran and al Qaeda "two of the greatest threats to America in this new century." Bush said that "the regime in Tehran also has a choice to make. It can live in peace with its neighbor, enjoy strong economic and cultural and religious ties. Or it can continue to arm and train and fund illegal militant groups, which are terrorizing the Iraqi people and turning them against Iran. If Iran makes the right choice, America will encourage a peaceful relationship between Iran and Iraq. Iran makes the wrong choice, America will act to protect our interests, and our troops, and our Iraqi partners." By issuing Tehran an ultimatum, Bush gave the lie to any U.S. commitment to diplomacy.

In their public statements, administration officials consistently tie Iran to rising violence in Iraq. As evidence of increased Iranian support and training for Shiite militias, the administration cites the March uprising in Basra and attacks on the Green Zone in Baghdad. On April 11, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told reporters, "I think that there is some sense of an increased level of supply of weapons and support to these groups. I would say one of the salutary effects of what Prime Minister [Nouri al-Maliki] did in Basra is that I think the Iraqi government now has a clearer view of the malign impact of Iran's activities inside Iraq." In a news conference and briefing on April 17 and 20, respectively, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice talked about Iran's "nefarious influences" on Iraq and repeatedly cited Iran as the major force behind the insurgency in Iraq.

National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley told Fox News, "Iran is very active in the southern part of Iraq. They are training Iraqis in Iran who come into Iraq and attack our forces, Iraqi forces, Iraqi civilians. There are movements of equipment. There's movements of funds. So we have illegal ... militia in the southern part of the country that really are acting as criminal elements that are oppressing the people down there."

The Bush administration believes it only stands to benefit from painting a polemic narrative of Iran. Casting Iran as a bad guy serves the dual purpose of both being able to justify a continued U.S. military presence in Iraq and drumming up support for a possible military strike against Iran.

Efforts to tie Iran to increased violence in Iraq have also come from outside the administration. In an opinion article for U.S. News & World Report, Fouad Ajami, an outspoken supporter of the Iraq War and advisor to Rice, writes: "In the Iraqi theater of great concern to us, Iran has been sly and duplicitous. It can dial up the violence and dial it down; it can arm and wink at the forces of the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr while professing fidelity to the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki....The Iranians and the militias and the criminal gangs rushed to fill the vacuum and to lay claim to the spoils. No one knows for sure the extent of criminal activity and smuggling that take place in the oil traffic in Basra. But it is reckoned to be large and profitable enough to sustain the militias and the warlords who contest the government's power in that city and in the south as a whole."

In a FoxNews.com opinion piece entitled "A Roadmap for Success in Iraq," Alirezah Jafarzadeh, a former affiliate of the National Council of Resistance in Iran, argues that the United States should enlist the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), an Iranian exile group based in Iraq that both the U.S. and Iranian governments consider a terrorist organization, "as a strategic partner in the fight against Islamic fundamentalism and a bulwark against the Iranian regime's influence in Iraq." He concludes, "If Tehran's tentacles are cut off in Iraq, the Iraqi people will have a real chance to form a peaceful, non-sectarian and democratic society. That is a plan that seems to already have the support of the U.S. Congress."

But while the Bush administration and pundits paint a good guys-bad guys narrative to sell conflict to the American people, reality is far more muddled. The administration script of connecting Iran to U.S. failures in Iraq does not include efforts at working with Iran to improve the situation in Iraq, nor does it include precedence even within the Bush administration itself for cooperating with Iran.

Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, hundreds of thousands of Iranians held candlelight vigils, the mayor of Tehran sent a cable to the mayor of New York, and reformist President Mohammad Khatami expressed his condolences to President Bush. Iranians then provided intelligence and cooperated with the United States to topple the Taliban in Afghanistan. Iran also helped secure an agreement among all elements of the Afghan opposition to form the successor government, insisted that the agreement include a commitment to hold democratic elections in Afghanistan, and persuaded the Northern Alliance to make essential concessions to seal the deal on the agreement. While many in Iran saw this as an opportune moment to work toward normalizing relations with the United States, Bush instead chose to repay Iran by infamously labeling it a charter member of the "axis of evil."

The inconvenient truth about Iraq is that it is a major area in which U.S. and Iranian interests significantly converge. Both countries support Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, and its Badr Organization. As a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia aptly put it, "The American military occupation of Iraq has facilitated an Iranian political occupation of Iraq." But with a growing undercurrent of nationalism that opposes these influences, time may be running out for the United States and Iran to work together to achieve a stable Iraq. Rather than demonizing Iran, the United States should focus on a diplomatic surge that includes direct, comprehensive, and unconditional talks not only on Iraq, but also on the range of outstanding issues between the two countries.

To its credit, in 2006 the Bush administration invited Iran to enter into limited direct talks over Iraq's security. However, the sessions quickly degenerated as both sides aired grievances and blamed the other for failures in Iraq. Efforts by both governments to micromanage the process, as well as the infrequency of meetings, have thwarted any prospect of successful results. The Bush administration's newest round of claims against Iran is another nail in the coffin for any chance that serious diplomatic talks might resume, let alone succeed. Meanwhile, the Iranian government appears poised to simply wait out this U.S. administration and hope that the next might not be so hostile.

Washington, D.C. – The Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation commended nine senators who urged funding cuts last week to the Department of Energy's efforts to both resume nuclear spent fuel reprocessing in the United States and to reuse nuclear weapons-usable material in domestic and foreign power reactors pursuant to the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership.

The nine senators who signed the April 24 letter making the request were Russ Feingold (D-WI), Ron Wyden (D-OR), John Kerry (D-MA), Charles Schumer (D-NY), Daniel Akaka (D-HI), Bernard Sanders (I-VT), Tom Harkin (D-IA), Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH). The letter asks Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee Chair Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and Ranking Member Pete Domenici (R-NM) to cut funding for the reprocessing and reuse of commercial spent nuclear fuel.

The full text of the letter is below.

"We write in opposition to Department of Energy's (DOE) fiscal year 2009 request for over $300 million to reprocess commercial nuclear spent fuel," the letter states. "We have significant concerns with DOE's plans to initiate commercial reprocessing of nuclear fuel in the United States, and do not support setting in motion a massive multi-decade government-subsidized nuclear reprocessing program."

Leonor Tomero, Director for Nuclear Non-Proliferation at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, noted: "This letter is an indication of increasing skepticism in Congress about the administration's reprocessing plans."

"The senators expressed wide-ranging concerns about the program ranging from cost, to nuclear proliferation risks, to environmental contamination dangers to past failures in this area," added Tomero.

The administration is seeking over $300 million for reprocessing in fiscal year 2009, including $302 for the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative. In fiscal year 2008, the Department of Energy sought $405 million but received only $179 million in the omnibus appropriations bill.

FULL TEXT OF LETTER

Dear Chairman Dorgan and Ranking Member Domenici:

We write in opposition to Department of Energy's (DOE) fiscal year 2009 request for over $300 million to reprocess commercial nuclear spent fuel. This effort, which is promoted as part of the Administration's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, is primarily funded under the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative.

Thank you for your strong leadership in rejecting DOE's fiscal year 2008 request for $405 million, providing instead $179 million and ensuring funds could not be used to construct reprocessing facilities for demonstration or commercialization. We respectfully ask you that you continue that leadership in the FY 2009 Energy and Water Development appropriations bill.

We have significant concerns with DOE's plans to initiate commercial reprocessing of nuclear fuel in the United States, and do not support setting in motion a massive multi-decade government-subsidized nuclear reprocessing program. A recent report from the National Academy of Sciences states "the GNEP program should not go forward," calling DOE's accelerated timetable and efforts to initiate commercial-scale facilities "unwise," "[lacking] economic justification" and that it "will create significant technical and financial risks."

Our concerns include:

Reprocessing and plutonium fuel use could cost taxpayers $200 billion. Although DOE has failed to provide an official cost analysis of the entire program, it is clear that reprocessing is drastically more expensive than the current practice of "once-through" fuel cycle systems. In 1996, the National Academy of Sciences estimated the costs for reprocessing and transmutation could easily reach $100 billion to deal only with the existing spent fuel in the US today, and the GNEP program proposes to reprocess spent fuel from new domestic reactors, as well as from foreign reactors.

Past efforts to reprocess and re-use spent fuel in the U.S. have been failures. In 1983, Congress canceled the Clinch River Breeder Reactor, initially estimated to cost $400 million, when GAO cost estimates reached $8.8 billion. In 1972, the West Valley, NY reprocessing facility shut down after reprocessing only one year's worth of spent fuel during its six years of operation, requiring a $5.3 billion clean-up effort that is still ongoing today.

GNEP has morphed into a large-scale construction project well beyond research and development (R&D), even though the technologies that GNEP proposes are not available. Since first unveiling GNEP to Congress in February 2006, the Administration has changed its plans at least four times and is now proposing to build a commercial-scale reprocessing plant and a full-scale fast reactor, even though currently available technologies do not meet GNEP's goals. Much of the necessary technology will not be viable for 40-50 years at best, as GNEP hinges on the development and deployment of dozens of fast reactors, a type of reactor that has not been successfully commercialized anywhere despite 50 years of U.S. and international research.

Reprocessing is not a viable solution to the nuclear waste problem. According to the recently released Keystone Center report, which is the product of a federal, industry, academic, and non-profit collaborative process, "reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel does not eliminate the need for a geologic repository, because there is residual high-level waste from the reprocessing stream that needs to be sequestered in a geologic repository." Reprocessing and plutonium fuel use would only divert attention away from a viable long-term solution to nuclear waste.

Reprocessing undercuts U.S. non-proliferation efforts. Commercial reprocessing in the United Kingdom, France, Japan, and Russia has resulted in the accumulation of over 150 metric tons of separated plutonium that can be used to make nuclear weapons, exacerbating the risk of terrorists gaining access to this material. Similarly, DOE's proposed technologies would also result in material that could be easily processed to make a nuclear weapon. At a time when the United States is seeking to limit the spread of reprocessing technology and expertise to other countries, resuming reprocessing would reverse decades of U.S. leadership that contributed to countries such as Argentina, Brazil, South Korea, and Taiwan abandoning their reprocessing ambitions.

We have serious concerns about the implications of current plans for commercial spent fuel reprocessing and urge you to cut funding for spent fuel reprocessing in the FY 09 Energy and Water Development appropriations bill.

We thank you for your continued leadership and consideration of this important matter.

Sincerely,

Russ Feingold (D-WI)
Ron Wyden (D-OR)
John Kerry (D-MA)
Charles Schumer (D-NY)
Daniel Akaka (D-HI)
Bernard Sanders (I-VT)
Tom Harkin (D-IA)
Edward Kennedy (D-MA)
Sherrod Brown (D-OH)

With the nation's eyes focused squarely on the presidential candidates, little attention has been paid to the growing list of influential members of Congress who plan to retire at the end of this year. These retirements will have important implications as committee chairs and ranking members pass their batons to successors who may or may not have the same priorities, ability, or forcefulness when it comes to arms control.

Arms control advocates scored a major victory at the end of 2007 when lawmakers eliminated all funding for the Bush administration's program to build the so-called "Reliable Replacement Warhead" or RRW. The administration, however, may continue to push for RRW funding in fiscal year 2009. With a number of key players slated to leave office and new members of Congress coming in, the 2008 congressional elections may help determine the fate of the controversial RRW program.

One prime example is Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM), ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that oversees the production and maintenance of nuclear weapons. With the Los Alamos National Lab located in his home state, Domenici has long been an ardent champion of new nuclear weapons programs. His retirement will hand the position of ranking member to Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), who will certainly not be as pro-nuclear as Domenici and may instead choose to focus on other issues. New Mexico's Senate seat itself may go to an opponent of the RRW program, Democratic Rep. Tom Udall, who will run against either Rep. Heather Wilson or Rep. Steve Pearce -- two Republican supporters of the program.

The retirement of Rep. David Hobson (R-OH), ranking member of the House Energy and Water Development Appropriations Committee, means the loss of a leading GOP voice against the Bush administration's efforts to build a new generation of nuclear weapons. Despite previous support for a nuclear "bunker buster," Hobson worked closely with committee chairman Pete Visclosky (D-IN) to slash the budget for new nuclear weapons in 2007. The pair was subsequently voted the Arms Control Association's "Arms Control Person of the Year" for their efforts. Unfortunately, Hobson's likely replacement as ranking member, Zach Wamp (R-TN), is unlikely to match Hobson's vigor and vision on the issue, weakening current bipartisan opposition to the program.

The unfortunate passing of Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA) likely means that chairmanship of the House Foreign Affairs Committee passes to Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA), who was set to take over the role next year after Lantos' announced retirement. Lantos leaves behind a generally strong record on arms control, including a number of votes opposing the development of new nuclear weapons. Berman's voting record presages a similar view, suggesting that Berman will uphold his predecessor's opposition to building new nuclear weapons.

But retirements alone will not decide the future of the "Reliable Replacement Warhead" program; incoming members will also play a significant role. For example, the Democrat challenging Republican Sen. Gordon Smith in Oregon, Jeff Merkley, is an expert on nuclear weapons and could easily become a leader on the issue. He previously worked on nuclear arms agreements in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and then moved on to the Congressional Budget Office where he prepared reports on Trident II missiles and the B-1B bomber. Merkley opposes building a new generation of nuclear weapons and endorses the Shultz-Kissinger-Perry-Nunn vision of moving toward a nuclear weapons-free world.

Another candidate who strongly opposes new nuclear weapons is Democratic Rep. Mark Udall, who is vying with former Republican Rep. Bob Schaffer for Sen. Wayne Allard's open seat in Colorado. Along with retiring Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID), Allard is a supporter of RRW who sits on the powerful Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee that oversees funding for the program. Even if the retirements of Allard and Craig do not result in Democrats taking over their seats, it will at least give new Republicans a seat at the table.

An additional wild card, of course, will be who gets sworn in as the next president in January 2009. Any Democratic president is unlikely to pursue RRW, but it is unclear what a Republican would do, especially if they faced a Democratic Congressional majority.

The upcoming congressional elections will prove tremendously important in the ongoing battle over whether to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons. While Hobson's presence in the House will be sorely missed, the subtractions in the Senate of Sens. Domenici, Allard, and Craig, combined with the possible additions of Udall, Merkley, and other opponents of new nuclear weapons like Tom Allen in Maine and Al Franken in Minnesota, could radically improve the prospects for arms control in 2009 and beyond. These new candidates' elections and leadership may help bury some of the Bush administration's more provocative nuclear weapons policies once and for all.

Far-sighted, responsible U.S. diplomatic leadership is urgently needed to break the impasse in relations with Iran.
Sustained, direct, unconditional and comprehensive talks with the Government of Iran would enable friends and allies of the United States to be more confident supporting U.S. positions if it becomes necessary to increase pressure on the Government of Iran, including appropriate multilateral sanctions. The United States should appoint, at the earliest date possible, a high-level official or Special Envoy for Iran, with the rank of Ambassador and/or of high public standing, which would have the authority to engage in direct, bilateral talks with Iran and in partnership with the international community concerning its nuclear program, as well as broader issues of mutual concern.

U.S. threats of regime change, isolation, sanctions and military action will only have a negative effect and further harden Iran's stance.
The United States should relinquish the rhetoric of regime change, which inevitably evokes the tarnished legacy of U.S. involvement with the 1953 coup that deposed Iran's popularly elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq. This rhetoric simply bolsters nationalist passions that are clearly contrary to the goal such a policy seeks to accomplish. Attempting to isolate the Iranian government also does not serve the cause of democracy in Iran or in the region.

Any U.S. or Israeli military attack on Iran runs the significant risk of catalyzing nationalistic passions within the entire population, which would strengthen the hand of the minority in Iran that that may actively desire a nuclear weapons capability. Any attack would also most likely generate hostile Iranian counterattacks in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
The staggering economic, humanitarian, political and military consequences of a conflict between the United States and Iran would damage American strategic interests for years to come. Confrontation would turn a largely pro-American Iranian populace against the United States, and further damage U.S. standing in the world. Oil prices could soar to $200 per barrel – making $5-per-gallon gasoline a reality.

It would be unwise and unrealistic for the United States to defer contact with Iran until all differences between the two governments have been resolved.
It is to the advantage of both the United States and Iran to identify issues on which critical interests to both countries converge and to try to make progress along separate tracks, even while differences remain in other areas.

Sanctions alone cannot replace diplomacy as a means of resolving differences between nations.
The argument that sanctions and economic pressure are diplomatic tools is flawed, and so too is the notion that the only strategic choices before the United States when it comes to Iran are war or capitulation. Such was the false choice posed by the Bush administration with regard to Iraq. There is a wide array of alternatives available to the United States for resolving tensions with Iran, but the political will to get to the negotiating table has been lacking on both sides.

It is possible to negotiate with Iran without betraying human rights.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch report that executions in Iran – including instances of stoning – have sharply increased under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Making Iran's human rights record a condition of gradual improvement of U.S.-Iran relations would help reduce tensions between the two countries without alienating the Iranian people and undermining America's soft power in Iran.

The U.S. regime-change slush fund (the so-called "program to promote democracy" in Iran) is universally rejected by its intended recipients in Iran because it has undermined work for democracy and reform.
Iranian authorities have used the Bush administration's regime change slush fund as a pretext to clamp down on Iran's civil society with thousands of arrests. The secrecy surrounding the distribution of these funds has created immense problems for Iranian reformers and human rights activists. Aware of their own deep unpopularity, the hardliners in Iran are terrified by the prospect of a "velvet revolution" and have become obsessed with preventing contacts between Iranian scholars, artists, journalists and political activists and their American counterparts.

Iran and the United States have significantly shared interests in Iraq.
The most effective way of achieving their shared goal of a stable Iraq is through sustained, direct, bilateral talks. Both countries support Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and its Badr Corps. In Iraq, the number one solution is for U.S. troops to leave as soon as possible, but this can't be done unless stability is achieved and Iran can help with this.

The reprehensible anti-Semitic statements by Iran's President Ahmadinejad deserve universal condemnation, but they should not be misconstrued as being representative of attitudes held by the vast majority of the Iranian population.

Small steps, such as the authorization of trade between U.S. entities and Iran's relatively small private sector, as well as the lifting of visa restrictions, should be contemplated as confidence-building measures that would create new constituencies within Iran for a government that is fully integrated into the international community.

BACKGROUND

The State Department says the purpose of its so-called "democracy promotion" fund in Iran is to support programs that "assist those inside Iran who desire basic civil liberties such as freedom of expression, greater rights for women, more open political process, and broader freedom of the press." On the surface this seems like a noble goal. However, the program is universally rejected by its intended recipients in Iran because it has undermined their work for democracy and reform.

Iranian authorities have used the Bush administration's regime change slush fund as a pretext to clamp down on Iran's civil society with thousands of arrests. The State Department has said that information regarding who receives the money and what it is used for should remain classified in order to protect those who receive it. However, the secrecy surrounding the distribution of these funds has created immense problems for Iranian reformers and human rights activists. Aware of their own deep unpopularity, the hardliners in Iran are terrified by the prospect of a "velvet revolution" and have become obsessed with preventing contacts between Iranian scholars, artists, journalists and political activists and their American counterparts. Enterprising Iranians are being accused by their government of taking money from the U.S. government and acting as spies.

Referring to the so-called "democracy promotion" program, activists and dissidents in Iran believe that democracy in Iran doesn't need money and that the fund has only undermined their work for reform. In an op-ed for the International Herald Tribune on May 30, 2007, Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi and Muhammed Sahimi aptly explained the situation:

The recent arrests, including the detention of Hossein Mousavian, a former nuclear negotiator and a close aid to Rafsanjani, should be viewed as Ahmadinejad's retaliation against the more moderate faction. But the most important reason has to do with President George W. Bush's policy toward Iran. Last year, the administration requested and received $75 million from Congress to 'bring' democracy to Iran.

Some of the $75 million has been devoted to the U.S.-funded Radio Farda, Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, as well as to VOA satellite TV, which are beaming Persian programs into Iran. Other portions have been given secretly to exiled Iranian groups, political figures and nongovernmental organizations to establish contacts with Iranian opposition groups.

In an October 2007 Chronicle of Higher Educationarticle, Woodrow Wilson Center Middle East Program Director Haleh Esfandiari, who was incarcerated in Tehran's Evin prison for several months on allegations of endangering Iranian national security, and Wilson Center International Security Studies Director Robert Litwak wrote about the unintended consequences of U.S. "democracy promotion" policies. According the authors:

U.S. law places formidable restrictions on the ability of American NGO's to operate in Iran. Meanwhile, while eschewing official contact, the United States attempts to financially support Iran's own nascent NGO's so that they can become agents of change within the society. Yet this program of democracy promotion has had the unintended consequence of further reducing the political space for open debate in Iran. In this new climate of intimidation, NGO's and journalists are subject to censorship and are defensively engaging in self-censorship. Prominent Iranian activists, such as the Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi, declared their opposition to the U.S. program because of continued sensitivity about foreign, particularly American, intrusion in Iran's domestic politics. The fact that the identity of Iranian recipients of U.S. aid is regarded as classified information by the U.S. government feeds the regime's paranoia and casts suspicion on all Iranian NGO's.

Suzanne Maloney, who was on the policy planning staff at the State Department for two years, said the following regarding democracy assistance funds:

I was worried about the safety of those on the receiving end of the funds. But I also just wondered if this was feasible. I don't see how a U.S. government that has been absent from Tehran for 30 years is capable of formulating a program that will have a positive effect...You had to wonder where this money was going to go and what's going to happen when you don't have the time to sit down and sift through the more questionable proposals. There's just not enough oversight. Of the 100 or more preliminary proposals I saw under the first call, it was an enormous challenge to find anything viable. This may have been a very high profile, sexy project, but the likelihood of real impact was minimal.

WHY DEMOCRACY PROMOTION FUNDING SHOULD BE ELIMINATED

Iranian reformists believe that democracy can't be imported.
It must be indigenous. They believe that the best the United States can do for democracy in Iran is to leave them alone. The fact is, no truly nationalist and democratic group will accept such funds.

Noninterference in Iran's domestic affairs is a legal obligation of the United States.
This was stipulated in the Algiers Accord that the United States signed with Iran in 1981 to end the hostage crisis.

The U.S. policy of "helping" the cause of democracy in Iran has backfired and made it more difficult for the more moderate factions within Iran's power hierarchy to argue for rapprochement with the West.
The secret dimension of the distribution of $75 million has created immense problems for Iranian reformists, democratic groups and human rights activists. Aware of their own deep unpopularity, the hard-liners in Iran are terrified by the prospects of a "velvet revolution" and have become obsessed with preventing contacts between Iranian scholars, artists, journalists and political activists and their American counterparts.

FISCAL YEAR 2009 BUDGET REQUEST

The U.S. Department of State Summary and Highlights of the Fiscal Year (FY) 2009 International Affairs budget request (also known as Function 150) reveals details regarding Iran-related funding in the Economic Support Fund line item. For FY 2009, the Statement Department is requesting $65 million in Economic Support Funds for Iran (page 79). This is more than three times the amount appropriated for FY 2008, which is estimated to be $21.623 million.

This tripling in Economic Support Funds is the result of several developments. First, some restructuring recently occurred in the State Department and its Iran desk. Second, the FY 2008 Foreign Operations bill appropriated $60 million (under Section 693) for so-called "Programs to Promote Democracy, Rule of Law and Governance in Iran." It has been unclear since Section 693 was originally added as an amendment introduced by Rep. Ander Crenshaw (R-FL) to the House Foreign Operations Appropriations bill for exactly which programs this funding was meant. Was it meant to increase funding for the Economic Support Fund or the Human Rights and Democracy Fund? Or was it meant to serve as an overall guideline for total spending on so-called "democracy promotion" programs? This is still a question that needs to be answered.

The tripling in the request for the Economic Support Funds either indicates that the State Department recognizes that Congress supports this program and it can get additional funds for it, or that the State Department is trying to streamline so-called democracy assistance funds through the Economic Support Fund line item.

While the FY 2009 Summary and Highlights does not state exactly how much of the International Broadcasting Operations funds ($654 million requested) will be devoted to Iran, it does note that funds will be used to launch Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Azerbaijani broadcasts to Iran. It is also unclear how much of $522 million in requested funding under the Educational and Cultural Exchange Programs will be allocated to Iran-related programs, but the funding will "provide new opportunities for American students to learn critical need languages." In addition to four other languages, the initiative focuses on Farsi.

FISCAL YEAR 2008 BUDGET REQUEST

On December 19, 2007, Congress passed an omnibus appropriations bill which included the consolidated State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act for FY 2008. The bill provides for $60 million to be made available for "programs to promote democracy, the rule of law and governance in Iran." The explanatory statement accompanying the bill specifies only two numbers with respect to Iran: $21.8 million for Economic Support Funds (ESF) and $8 million for the Democracy Fund. The remainder of the $60 million is embedded in other accounts and amounts are not specified. The final appropriation was nearly halved from President Bush's February 2007 budget request of $108.71 million, which was comprised of $75 million for Economic Support Funds (ESF), $28.21 million for the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) Voice of America - Persian and Radio Farda programs and $5.5 million in Diplomatic and Consular Program (D&CP) funds.

FISCAL YEAR 2006 FUNDING

In the regular FY 2006 Foreign Operations spending bill, Congress appropriated no less than $6.55 million (Public Law 109-102) for Iran from Democracy Funds and requested that at least $10 million be spent by the State Department on democracy and human rights programs in Iran overall. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also requested $75 million in the FY 2006 Emergency Supplemental for Iran. Congress only appropriated $66.1 million, allocated as follows (Public Law 109-234):

• $36.1 million for the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG)
• $10.274 million in International Broadcasting Operations
• $25.826 million in Broadcasting Capital Improvements
• $20 million for democracy programs in Iran through the Middle East Partnership Initiative in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs
• $5 million for Internet and other interactive programming through the Bureau of International Information Programs
• $5 million for education and cultural exchanges through the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

According to a June 2007 report, the State Department had only obligated approximately $16.05 million for Iran democracy programs from its FY 2006 regular and supplemental budgets, which included $11.9 million through MEPI and $4.15 million through the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. Additionally, $1.77 million has been obligated through the Bureau of International Information Programs, and $2.22 million through the Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs from the FY 2006 regular and supplemental budgets.

POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS

1. Congress should request a Government Accountability Office report evaluating the usefulness of Iran democracy promotion funding.
2. Congress should require the President to submit quarterly reports accounting for all government funding relating to Iran, including all funding in support of pro-democracy groups and of "regime change" in Iran.
3. Congress should reduce or eliminate all "democracy promotion" funding for Iran.
4. Congress should reverse the U.S. policy of regime change towards Iran.
5. Congress should require study to determine the content and effectiveness of U.S. broadcasting into Iran.

The Bush administration requested $190 billion in war funding for fiscal year (FY) 2008. Congress approved $87 billion of this request in late 2007, leaving the remaining $103 billion to be considered in 2008. Additionally, in February 2008 the administration submitted a placeholder $70 billion request for war funding in FY 2009. Press reports indicate that Congressional Democrats may combine the remaining $103 billion FY 2008 request and $70 billion FY 2009 placeholder into a "super supplemental" that will fund ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through early 2009.

On April 16, the Senate Appropriations Committee held a hearing on this complicated supplemental funding situation with Office of Management and Budget Director Jim Nussle. Nussle was subjected to a flurry of tough questions from Democratic and Republicans lawmakers, many of whom expressed frustration over the administration's refusal to finance the wars through more transparent budgetary processes.

Senators had every right to be upset. Nussle's testimony was riddled with misleading half-truths and outright inaccuracies. Here are some of Nussle's more egregious statements.

NUSSLE: Congress, I believe, needs to fund our troops by Memorial Day...Failure to act quickly could result in an unfortunate replay of what happened last December, when furlough warnings were issued by the Department of Defense.

FACT: The Bush administration may want to stage a political stunt by sending out furlough notices, but military leaders have been clear about the necessary timeline for approving the next war supplemental.

The Department of Defense (DOD) told Congress that the Army could finance its Operations & Maintenance costs until the beginning of July 2008, and its Military Personnel costs until about late June, using funds already appropriated by Congress to date. The Congressional Research Service estimates that DOD could continue to finance war costs for an additional one to two months by using currently available tools, such as transfer authority, to provide additional resources to the Army if Congress has not passed the pending FY 2008 supplemental request by July 2008.

NUSSLE: The administration chose to request war funding [for FY 2009] as an emergency supplemental in order to provide flexibility to the Department of Defense and our military commanders, in order to address the changes that inevitably occur on the ground. The ability to respond to changing conditions and requirements in the field has and will continue to ensure that our troops have the very best resources to succeed in their mission.

FACT: The Bush administration's stated desire to "provide flexibility" flies in the face of Congressional requirements and may have been an attempt to lowball the funding request so as not to alarm the American public about ever-mounting total war costs.

The FY 2007 Defense Authorization bill, a measure that passed in a Republican-controlled Congress under the stewardship of Sens. John Warner (R-VA) and John McCain (R-AZ), contained a provision mandating that the Bush administration present its full war funding request alongside its "base" budget request at the beginning of each year. The White House complied with this requirement in FY 2008, presenting its full (at the time) $142 billion war funding request in February 2007. Unfortunately, the administration abandoned this good faith compliance in its FY 2009 war funding request.

The White House claimed that it wanted to wait for recommendations from military commanders, including an anticipated spring report by Army General David Petraeus, before submitting any more of its request. But this rationale doesn't hold up in light of the fact that the full FY 2008 war funding request was submitted at a time when the "surge" was only beginning in Iraq and conditions were just as uncertain as they are today. Refusing to submit its full FY 2009 war funding request may have been an attempt on the part of the administration to shield the American public from the price tag of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the cost of which is projected to reach $870 billion or more by the end of 2008.

NUSSLE: We also chose to request war funding as an emergency to ensure that when our troops come home we haven't left the Department of Defense with an overinflated budget that could be difficult to adjust in the future.

FACT: Experts on defense budgeting in the United States have widely acknowledged the ways in which the continued use of supplemental funding is actually harming the Department of Defense.

Admiral Michael Mullen, the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in January 2008 that "supplementals need to be dramatically reduced and put in the baseline budget as rapidly as we can." The prestigious Iraq Study Group stated in its 72nd recommendation that "costs for the war in Iraq should be included in the President's annual budget request, starting in FY 2008: the war is in its fourth year, and the normal budget process should not be circumvented." Well-known budget analyst Steven Kosiak told the Senate Budget Committee in February 2007 that "[DOD] sent the Services new guidance to use in drawing up their respective requests...with this guidance, the Defense Department essentially opened the floodgates in terms of what the Services could ask to have funded through [global war on terror] supplementals...such guidance amounts to, in effect, telling the Services that they no longer need to find room in the regular annual defense budget to cover the full cost of their long-term plans."

Finally, the Congressional Research Service, Congressional Budget Office, and Government Accountability Office have all concluded that the supplementary war funding process weakens Congress's ability to provide the type of oversight absolutely necessary for fostering DOD accountability.

NUSSLE: The President made the decision that he did not want to tie the hands of the next commander-in-chief, in determining what the strategy and corresponding funding would be after taking office, after the election this year, that [is why] we would put a [$70 billion] placeholder [for FY 2009 war funding] in there.

FACT: Despite this altruistic claim, President Bush's motivation for submitting only a $70 billion placeholder for the FY 2009 war funding request was undoubtedly political.

Submitting only a portion of its war funding request indicates that the White House will not fund operations in Iraq through all of fiscal year 2009, which ends Sept. 30, 2009. By dragging its feet, the Bush administration ensures that the next president and the 111th Congress will confront major war cost questions soon after taking office in early 2009. If a Democrat is elected president, he or she will immediately be placed between a rock and a hard place: Ask Congress quickly for billions of dollars in war funding, or face accusations from Republicans of not supporting the troops. The new Democratic president will be forced to request money to avoid this criticism, a move that will renege on campaign promises to wind down the war, elicit cries of "flip-flopping" from Republicans, and infuriate the majority of the American public that considers itself anti-war and sees a vote for a Democratic president as a vote to end the war.

President Bush is playing political hardball with the war budget. Reliance on political posturing and stopgap supplemental war funding is not the way our government should pay for America's military needs.

NUSSLE: Many other expenditures for wars in the past have been funded in a similar way, and it's for that reason that we make the request [as an emergency supplemental] the way we do.

FACT: Since 2001, the ongoing use of supplementals by the Bush administration to finance military deployments abroad has risen to historically unprecedented levels.

A June 2006 Congressional Research Service study concluded that during conflicts of the past 60 years, supplemental funding was used only initially to finance U.S. military operations. As soon as even a partial projection of costs could be made, usually within a year or two at most, ongoing military operations were funded through normal Pentagon appropriations bills. The Bush administration, however, continues to finance ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through the supplemental process. Using supplementals during the early years of these conflicts made sense because exact requirements were largely unknown and there was no baseline from which to derive estimates for the year ahead. Six and a half years later, however, this is no longer a legitimate justification. The Bush administration's exploitation of war supplementals sets a dangerous precedent for the future and threatens to further weaken the federal budgeting process.

For more information on the supplementary war funding process, see "Problems with Using Supplementals to Fund Ongoing Military Operations in Iraq," Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation (March 2008).