On September 24, 1996, President Clinton signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which would ban any signatory nation from exploding nuclear weapons.

The problem is that 15 years later, the Senate has yet to ratify the treaty. And without the full backing of the United States, the treaty has languished, with progress in other countries stalled as well.

But now, President Obama is testing the waters for a possible push to finally ratify the treaty, and set the stage for a global ban on nuclear explosions. After our recent victory in making the first reductions to the US and Russian nuclear arsenals in decades, momentum is on our side.

Last night Congress voted to pass the final budget for 2011, and while there is a lot we are not happy about, there is one success to celebrate. Nuclear nonproliferation efforts were given an increase of $190 million over last year’s funding.

These important programs that clean up loose nuclear material around the world had been threatened with as much as a 20% cut! That would have severely jeopardized the efforts to lock down bomb-grade nuclear material within four years, one of the crucial steps on the road towards a nuclear weapons free world.

from Global Security Newswire:

Who will triumph in one of the last big political battles of 2010? The Republicans, Democrats, security experts, military officials and 73% of the American public who support ratifying New START? Or Senator Jon Kyl and his right wing cronies who are playing partisan politics with nuclear security?

You can help determine the outcome. Click here to tell your senators you want them to vote yes on New START and to do it now.

Sen. Kyl says Republicans need more time to think about this treaty. But in the year since the last START treaty expired, the Senate has held 21 hearings on New START and the administration has answered more than 900 questions from Republicans. Every reasonable national security expert has come out in favor of this treaty. There is no excuse for delaying an agreement that helps decrease the threat from nuclear weapons.

In these last crucial weeks before a likely vote on the New START, many Senate Republicans are still on-the-fence about which way they will vote. So what are the consequences if New START fails?

The latest bout of treaty opposition is in the form of fundraising from right wing groups such as The Heritage Foundation and The John Birch Society (which has consistently opposed every nuclear arms treaty between the US and the Soviet Union/Russia.) Mitt Romney followed up his ridiculous Washington Post op-ed with a fundraising letter calling for donations to stop the treaty. It’s another not-so-subtle attempt to burnish his neoconservative credentials for the 2012 GOP presidential race.

The whopping $7 billion for nuclear weapons programs that was proposed for 2011 is just the tip of the iceberg in a huge funding increase for the nuclear weapons complex. Last year, Republicans successfully pushed to require the Obama administration to submit a special report on modernizing the nuclear weapons complex, maintaining or enhancing our nuclear weapons stockpile, and the expected costs for the next 10 years. When the New START treaty was officially submitted to the Senate, this report had to be released. Wanting to win over Republican senators’ support for the New START treaty to cut US and Russian nuclear arsenals, the administration put forward a plan that greatly increases nuclear weapons related funding to the level of $180 billion over the next 10 years. From the Washington Post: