The Congressional Budget Office was created in 1974 to help Congress better understand the government’s finances. In one report now done every two years, CBO…
The Congressional Budget Office was created in 1974 to help Congress better understand the government’s finances. In one report now done every two years, CBO examines nuclear deterrent spending.
In its latest review, CBO admits the U. S. has “not built any new nuclear weapons or delivery systems” for nearly four decades, yet questions whether the country should support the administration’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) and by implication the 2018 bipartisan congressionally mandated National Security Strategy Commission (NSSC).
Both the NPR and NSSC warn of the growing nuclear threats from Russia and China and call for a serious nuclear modernization effort backed by additional nuclear investments.
But despite these twin calls for more nuclear spending, CBO uses creative accounting tricks to make it appear nuclear spending is already markedly increasing.
For example, CBO in its 2017 report added in 100 percent of all the conventional bomber costs to the nuclear accounts, increasing four-fold their previous estimates and adding an astounding $200 billion to their estimate of the 30-year costs of nuclear “modernization.”
This was done despite official OSD testimony to Congress that the nuclear costs of our dual use conventional bombers were no more than 3 percent of the bomber spending accounts.
CBO also in 2017 assessed all nuclear programs over 30 years, not the usual 10-year budget window. This magically lifted “supposed” nuclear spending to over $1 trillion, a figure latched onto by the disarmament community to subsequently “prove” nuclear spending was out of control.
