Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriation Act, 2014

Floor Speech

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Mr. TURNER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

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Mr. TURNER. Mr. Chairman, I join with the chairman and ranking member, a fellow Ohioan, in opposition to this amendment.

I strongly oppose the gentleman from Texas' amendment, as it would seriously undermine our national security.

Specifically, this amendment would strike a provision providing the Department of Energy with the authority to use existing funds for domestic uranium enrichment technology development. Let me emphasize that there is no direct funding in the bill for the project. The provision simply provides the authority to transfer existing funds from other Department of Energy programs.

In the last Congress, as we have previously spoken, the Congress beat two amendments that were offered that were similar, both with strong opposition to these amendments.

According to the National Nuclear Security Administration, in the near future, the United States will need a fully domestic source of unrestricted enriched uranium, based on domestically-developed technology, to support the nuclear weapons program and Navy nuclear reactors program.

The United States is prohibited from seeking this material internationally. Regardless of the agreements, the United States must never rely on foreign companies for such a critical component of our nuclear deterrent. Simply stated, we need U.S.-owned domestic supply of enriched uranium, and the use of a foreign supplied material would violate these long-standing policies and agreements.

This has been defeated twice before, and this is really simple. It has been defeated because this is a critical component of our nuclear deterrent. Do we want to depend on foreign or do we want to have a domestic source? Congress has twice said it would be crazy to jeopardize our nuclear deterrent and rely on foreign sources. Congress should again for the third time defeat this amendment because we need to rely on domestic in protecting the United States nuclear deterrent.

I urge my colleagues to once again oppose this amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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