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.

That’s why I believe the time for the CTBT is now. Click here to tell your senators to support ratification of the CTBT.

As the leaders of the Campaign for a Nuclear Weapons Free World we are spearheading a national week of action starting September 24th, with hundreds of groups across the country urging their senators to support ratification of the CTBT as soon as possible.

Join thousands of other activists to amplify your voice and call for the Senate to ratify the CTBT.

This treaty is a necessary step to achieving a world free of nuclear weapons. If we want to repeat the victory we had with New START, we need to lay the groundwork now. The sooner we show the Senate that the public supports the CTBT, the better chance we have to swing the key votes we need to ratify.

Click here to tell your senators to support ratification of the CTBT and make the world safer from the threat of nuclear weapons.

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:

The bill, [voted on last night], sets aside $2.32 billion for nuclear nonproliferation initiatives administered by the National Nuclear Security Administration. Much of the additional funding is focused on the Obama administration’s effort to secure vulnerable nuclear materials around the world….

The final version of the bill used the number the Democratic Senate had proposed, which is a 9% increase over last year’s funding. This is one of the only programs that was increased in the federal budget, many other programs were cut back. This is still lower than the President’s request for 2011, but it marks a dramatic shift from the GOP-backed House proposal to slash this funding. Their version of the bill would have given $241 million less to these critical programs.

These programs secured 800 bombs worth of nuclear material in 2010, and with this increase in funding, will be able to keep on track to complete this work within four years.

The Campaign for a Nuclear Weapons Free world organized a national April 5th Call-in Day to save nuclear security funding, and people around the country called and emailed their senators and representatives asking them to fund these programs that are working to make the world safe from the threat of nuclear weapons and nuclear proliferation.

If you were one of the people who emailed your representatives: Thank you and congratulations!

This week we will enjoy this success. Next week, we will get back to work to change next year’s budget for nuclear weapons. We’ll be urging Congress to stop spending billions of taxpayer dollars on giant bomb factories and outdated warheads, and instead to dismantle the weapons we have and deal with dangerous nuclear material. If we are ever going to achieve a world free of all nuclear weapons, we have to put our money where our mouth is.

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.

But still some Republicans are digging in their heels, using ridiculous stall tactics and demanding exorbitant amounts of money to fund the nuclear weapons complex.  Republicans are using these games to avoid taking a position on what should be an uncontroversial treaty. It’s time to end the games and force them to take a stand. Click here to write your senators to push for a New START vote before the end of the year.

It’s going to be even harder to ratify this treaty in 2011, so we need to pull out all the stops now. The administration, the media, Republican treaty supporter Dick Lugar (R-IN), and the arms control community are putting the heat on Kyl for his shameful tactics. You helped us flip two Republicans to vote in favor of this treaty in committee.  Now we can finish what we started and ratify the first major arms control treaty in decades. Click here to take action.

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 Obama administration needs 8 to 10 Senate Republican votes in order to pass the treaty. So far, 1 has pledged support (Richard Lugar, R-IN) and only 2 oppose (Jim DeMint, R-SC and James Inhofe, R-OK.) But a number of GOP heavy weights are on-the-fence, including John McCain. Their decisions are expected to swing remaining senators. This still leaves too much room for doubt.

There is too much at stake to assume safe passage for the New START treaty. Among its benefits, the agreement will reduce the size of nuclear arsenals in the US and Russia, which account for approximately 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons. The consequences of failing to ratify the treaty would extend beyond US – Russian relations.

Former Democratic Senator Gary Hart believes that the non-proliferation agenda will falter without New START ratification:

The two of us have the greatest burden, but sooner or later we want to bring in China and our European allies that have nuclear arsenals and see how far we can go. But it must begin with us and the Russians, and if we turn our back… it’s a giant step backward and it would set back our diplomacy, foreign policy, and national security in serious ways.

John Isaacs, executive director of the Council for a Livable World, warns those who seek to oppose the treaty:

The alternative [to ratification] is no START treaty, no verification, a clear setback to U.S.-Russian relations and widespread questioning of U.S. ability to carry forth international agreements if we can’t get this treaty through.

The US’s allies recognize that the New START treaty is essential to the administration’s foreign policy agenda. Many European diplomats are growing increasingly frustrated with the slow pace of progress on the treaty. Obama promised them ratification, yet it’s been 6 months since the previous treaty expired.

France’s Ambassador to Washington Pierre Vimont told foreign policy blog, The Cable:

From the European point of view, nobody can understand why the START treaty has not been ratified. When we send cables back home saying that START might not be ratified, they ask us ‘What have you been drinking?

Timing is crucial for New START ratification. We must ratify the treaty before Senate recess. It’s in the GOP’s best interest to delay the vote because after the November election, a GOP-heavy Senate will make it even harder to pass. That’s why Washington can’t count on New START ratification without making the most of these last few weeks.

The administration on Thursday released a one-page unclassified summary of the classified report sent to lawmakers. That summary shows that spending on modernization of the nuclear weapons complex over the decade will reach $80 billion, growing from $6.4 billion this year to $7 billion in coming years and eventually topping $8 billion beginning in 2016. The growing costs reflect not just construction of facilities but also the refurbishment and possible replacement of some warheads in the next decade, all without the need for testing, according to the summary.

An additional $100 billion is to be spent on strategic nuclear delivery systems such as bombers and land- and submarine-based intercontinental ballistic missiles. Research is underway on a new strategic bomber and a new class of strategic submarines.

You can download the unclassified summary (“Fact sheet on 1251 report”) on the State Department website here.

What will all this money go toward? Much of the funding will likely go to large infrastructure projects, building nuclear weapons facilities that will allow the US to ramp up nuclear weapons production in the future. When the funding for just 2011 was proposed in February, I blogged about three of these facilities that will cost billions over the next decade and, taken together, will lock in US nuclear weapons production for years to come.

Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility (CMRR) – While there is a need to upgrade the facility due to safety and seismic concerns, the new facility is also being designed to allow for increased plutonium pit production – the bomb cores of nuclear weapons. Currently, the US has the capacity to produce up to 20 “pits” per year at Los Alamos. This new facility would allow the US to produce between 50-80 plutonium pits per year. With this production capacity, a future administration could quickly churn out more or new nuclear weapons.

Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) – The UPF facility at Oak Ridge, Tennessee is a uranium manufacturing facility that could increase warhead production capacity. It would allow for 50-80 uranium secondaries to be produced each year.

Kansas City Plant – This facility creates the non-nuclear parts for nuclear weapons, such as fuses. The new facility in Missouri will be funded privately in the future, instead of by the federal government. Groundbreaking for the new facility may begin this summer.

What could we do instead with this funding? The possibilities are endless. Especially in this economy, there is no shortage of places where funding for nuclear weapons could be better spent.

Earlier this week, I was in Nevada as part of our campaign work to support the New START treaty and cut the nuclear weapons budget. Nevada continues to have the highest foreclosure rate in the nation: 1 in 69 households.  According to the National Priorities Project tradeoff calculator, Nevadans could be using their tax dollars for housing:

Taxpayers in Nevada will pay $158.3 million for proposed nuclear weapons in FY2010. For the same amount of money, the following could have been provided: 845 Affordable Housing Units.

In Missouri, the local Kansas City council declared a 180 acre soybean field “blighted” to allow construction of the new nuclear weapons facility to proceed. At the same time that municipal funding will go toward the new Kansas City Plant facility, the Kansas City Missouri School Board “voted to close 26 schools on Wednesday night. As a result of that vote, 700 employees, including 300 teachers, will lose their jobs.”

The National Priorities Project calculates that:

Taxpayers in Missouri will pay $269.5 million for proposed nuclear weapons in FY2010. For the same amount of money, the following could have been provided: 5,347 Elementary School Teachers for One Year.

Keep in mind this is the tradeoff for just one year of nuclear weapons funding. For the next decade, we will be spending far more than we do this year if we do not act now to reduce the nuclear weapons budget and realign our nuclear weapons program toward disarmament. Rather than creating new facilities to build up our nuclear weapons stockpile or create new nuclear weapons, the US needs to move toward shrinking our nuclear weapons arsenal and instead funding programs to dismantle nuclear weapons we don’t use.