Speaking of having a love-hate relationship –
Conservative Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) loves nuclear weapons. Indeed, he is ranking member of the Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces.
Thus some of his comments today at a National Defense University breakfast meeting were surprising.
Sessions supports the full funding level of $88 billion for the nuclear weapons complex over a decade.
But boy is he bummed over the cost of building two nuclear weapons facilities in New Mexico and Tennessee. Bummed and stunned.
He complained that they would cost $12 billion for the two, which he later upped to $14 billion (he added $6 billion and $8 billion and came to the higher figure).
Most of the Senator’s talk was about the huge budget deficit facing the country and the looming sequester of the defense budget.
But while he supports nuclear weapons spending, he is incredulous that these two buildings will cost $14 billion.
And, he pointed out, this money is for building buildings rather than “the point of the spear,” as he called them, the weapons.
Maybe, he said, there could be some savings from these two buildings.
Incidentally, Sessions is apparently the one who put a $3.7 billion cost cap on the Los Alamos facility in the Fiscal Year 2012 Defense Authorization Bill.
Hmmm, perhaps Sen. Sessions could be persuaded to spend this money on some other programs.
Not food stamps, however, as he made clear more than once in his remarks.
