House Rejects Turning Nuclear Weapons Into Energy Efficiency
This last week, in an amendment to the Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, H.R. 2354, U.S. Representative Peter Welch presented a powerful idea: Restore cuts to an energy efficiency program that helps local economies across the United States, and take the money from programs used to pay for America’s nuclear weapons.
H.R. 2354 cut 491 million dollars from an energy efficiency program that funded local projects to do things like installing solar panels, improving insulation, and even helping dairy farmers generate electricity from cow wastes instead of simply dumping those wastes. These kinds of efforts employed workers in communities across the United States. Energy bills for individual Americans and American businesses are reduced, and our nation’s energy infrastructure becomes more resistant to erratic shifts in energy markets.
America’s nuclear weapons, on the other hand, sit unused, without anyone wanting to use them. The Soviet Union they were designed to counter has been dead for a generation. There is no massive enemy empire whose cities even the most hawkish Americans could reasonably plan to obliterate with nuclear weapons.
Taking that 491 million dollars from wasteful nuclear weapons programs and transferring it into energy efficiency efforts makes sense for our economy, for the environment, and for our real national security. Yet, the House of Representatives rejected Representative Welch’s amendment by a vote of 300 against, and only 123 in favor.
3 Republicans voted in favor of Welch’s pro-efficiency amendment: Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, Rep. Chris Gibson, Rep. Ron Paul.
However, 66 Democrats joined the resistance to Welch’s plan for refunding energy efficiency. Those Democrats were:
