Political Quotes

“Mr. Chair, I rise today to offer a critical amendment to pause wasteful and unnecessary spending at the Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility. This is a responsible measure. It will pause the development of this nuclear facility while we fix the cost overruns and mismanagement associated with this. Given the rhetoric of the Republican side of the aisle about reining in excessive spending, this amendment should be something that we would all agree on. The estimated cost of the Savannah River facility tripled from $3.6 billion to nearly $11 billion since the start of the project. It will likely continue to increase since this program is not scheduled to be completed until 2035. According to the August Government Accountability Office report, it will probably be delayed even further until 2038. Why are we spending $11 billion on this wasteful facility? You would think it might be part of our critical national security, but that is not the case. For those unfamiliar with this facility, it is being built to produce plutonium pits, which is the core of a nuclear weapon. We already have thousands of these pits. Some will stand up here and say, oh, my. We need to replace them because they age out. These pits will last at least 100 years. Some studies by independent panels of scientists and academics have suggested that these pits have an even longer life cycle.…”