According to this article Congress can’t find about $3.6 billion in additional funds for updated voting equipment, AIDS assistance abroad, veterans health care and education but they are willing to fund the following:
Bargainers on the energy-water bill provided $7.5 million for work on the bunker busters, bombs that would burrow through earth and rock to destroy underground targets. The administration wanted twice that amount.
The bill would provide all $6 million Bush proposed for research into ”mini-nukes” of less than 5 kilotons. But $4 million of that amount would be provided only after the administration submits a report on the status of the country’s nuclear weapons stockpile.
The lawmakers provided $11 million of the $23 million the Energy Department wanted for preliminary studies for manufacturing plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons. The department says the triggers are needed for the country’s aging arsenal of warheads.
They also agreed to enough money to shorten the current three-year lead time needed to resume underground testing of nuclear weapons to two years, not the 18 months the administration requested.
The House version of the bill had made even deeper cuts in the nuclear weapons work, while the Senate had agreed to give all the administration had requested.
Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, and Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., chief authors of the bill, called it a compromise. But opponents of nuclear testing complained that the final version went too far.
”I have the most profound objection to this reopening of the nuclear door,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.
They are also intending to fund this disaster in the making, a project that apparently places the careers of whistleblowers/investigators in jeopardy.