The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler debunks the false claim made by supporters of nuclear disarmament that the United States will spend $700 billion on nuclear weapons programs in the next decade.
The $700 billion figure originates from a controversial cost estimate produced in September by the Ploughshares Fund, a grant-making foundation based in San Francisco, California. The figure was prominently cited by Congressman Ed Markey (D, Mass.) and other liberal lawmakers in an October 11th letter that urged the supercommittee to spare domestic entitlement programs—and to defund the U.S. nuclear deterrent instead—as it sought to cut over $1.2. trillion in long-term federal spending. (The supercommittee failed to meet its Thanksgiving deadline, offering no recommendation of spending cuts at all.)
