US nuclear taxes — the true costs

Every April we fund our nation’s budget and economic priorities on Tax Day. This year finds our nation emerging from the global COVID-19 pandemic and still struggling with years of infrastructure neglect.

This neglect has impacted the health and wellbeing of our communities, resulting in water shortages, contamination, and toxic legacies, as is evident in the ongoing Jackson, Miss., and previous Flint, Mich., disasters and recent East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment. Events like these most often are occurring in economically disadvantaged communities and in communities of color.

We continue to face the growing existential challenges, economic burden, and impact of climate change nationally and globally.

And then there is the ongoing war in Ukraine, which potentially threatens the entire world.

This year the increased risk of nuclear war hangs over us more than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis.

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved their Nuclear Doomsday Clock to 90 seconds till midnight earlier this year, the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been.

Russian President Putin’s preparations to place tactical nuclear weapons in neighboring Belarus would lower the threshold of nuclear war, further heightening the risk.

It’s fair to ask, ‘Who determines our priorities and how do we fund them?’

Ultimately, “Budgets are moral documents,” as theologian Rev. Jim Wallis has noted. What role do nuclear weapons play in that morality?

We find ourselves as a nation grappling with economic, environmental, social and racial justice issues, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the very existence of nuclear weapons — and all that they entail, from mining, production, testing, stockpiling, dismantling and potential for their use — are among the greatest perpetrators of these injustices.

Nuclear weapons threaten us every moment of every day.

While most reasonable people recognize that these weapons cannot and must not ever be used, approximately 12,512 weapons remain in the nuclear arsenals of the world. We also know that the use of even a tiny fraction (less than half a percent) of these weapons over a single populated region would cause catastrophic climate change resulting in a global famine putting potentially 2 billion people at risk.

These weapons also threaten us by robbing precious resources that could be redirected to the many needs that our communities cry out for. The Nuclear Weapons Cost Program of the Nobel Prize winning Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles, now in its 34th year, attempts to determine the full cost of nuclear weapons programs to our communities. There have been many excellent calculations of portions of our nuclear weapons costs including the ICAN report on global costs. These reports deal primarily with the cost of warheads, delivery systems and development alone, in an attempt to compare one nation to another.

In our report, we include verifiable costs of all nuclear programs that would not be spent if nuclear weapons did not exist. These include funding of the nuclear missile defense system, environmental cleanup and legacy programs dealing with communities that have been contaminated by the mining, development, testing and stockpiling of these weapons. Also included is nuclear nonproliferation funding and funding to safeguard and sequester nuclear weapons in Russia and former Soviet Union States.

Determining the full cost of U.S. nuclear weapons programs is a tedious process, as the United States is not fully transparent in these figures.

We have chosen to list only figures that we can provide reference to. There are other reports that estimate the forecast to be much higher, including Dr. Timmon Wallis in “Warheads to Windmills: How to Pay for a Green New Deal.” In 2013, with the release of the “Black Budget” by Edward Snowden, it was estimated that there were some $9 billion in “top secret” nuclear operations that were never publicly released. While likely still being funded, it has become impossible to track those expenditures and thus they are not included in our report.

The total costs of all U.S. nuclear weapons programs for the 2022 Tax Year which funds our Fiscal Year 2023 budget is $90.34 Billion.

What does this mean to our communities? In Jackson, Miss., with its 148,761 residents earning a per capita income 62 percent of the national average, their tax dollar contribution to nuclear weapons programs is about $25 million. For Flint, Mich., with its 80,628 residents earning a per capita income of 50 percent of the national average, their nuclear contribution is over $10.8 million. The Navajo Nation — whose 143,435 residents have experienced the health legacy of nuclear weapons, having been victims of significant radiation exposure from nuclear weapons testing and development for decades, and whose per capita income is 40 percent of the national average — will spend over $15.6 million on nuclear weapons programs.

The nation’s poorest county of Buffalo County, S.D., with its 1,923 largely indigenous Crow Creek Sioux Tribe residents, earning on average 32 percent of the national average, will spend about $167,000 dollars as their contribution to nuclear weapons programs. Is this their priority? Does it add in any way to their security, health or wellbeing? In reality, these weapons are among the greatest threats to their security.

In a participatory democracy, is this how they would choose to spend their treasure? Polls show that a 66 percent majority of Americans favor the abolition of nuclear weapons and that 58 percent are also fearful of nuclear war.

At this moment of international crisis, once again we are faced with the reality that as long as nuclear weapons exist, it is not a matter of if nuclear weapons will be used, but when they will be used — either by intent, miscalculation, mistake or cyberattack.

The moment demands leadership from our elected officials for the sake of our future and that of our children’s children. 

Fortunately, there is a rapidly growing movement in our nation called, “Back from the Brink,” supported by 333 elected officials across the country, that supports the elimination of all nuclear weapons while laying out four precautionary steps necessary in the process. Rep. James McGovern (D-Mass.) has demonstrated the courage to support this effort with the recent introduction of H. Res 77. 

Nuclear weapons are not a political issue. They are a survival issue. Each of us has a role to play in encouraging our representatives — regardless of party — to endorse this resolution and move us back from the brink. The urgency is now. Time and luck are not on our side.

Robert Dodge, M.D., is a family physician practicing in Ventura, Calif. He is the President of Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles (www.psr-la.org), and sits on the National Board serving as the Co-Chair of the Committee to Abolish Nuclear Weapons of National Physicians for Social Responsibility (www.psr.org). Physicians for Social Responsibility received the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize and is a partner organization of ICAN, recipient of the 2017 Nobel Peace Price. Dodge also sits on the Steering Committee of Back from the Brink.