WASHINGTON, October 9. /TASS/. US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright complained during a cabinet meeting at the White House that his department will run out of money for nuclear arsenal modernization programs in the coming days due to the government shutdown.
As he noted, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) under the US Department of Energy is responsible for maintaining the readiness and production of the nuclear arsenal, as well as engines for submarines and aircraft carriers. However, Democrats in the US Senate have long delayed the confirmation process for the head of this agency.
"Now they're filibustering the funding, and the next six, seven days, we're going to run out of funding, and the retooling of our nuclear stockpile, the ultimate guarantor of our sovereignty, is going to be underfunded, and we're going to have to slow down and creep to a crawl," Wright said.
The US federal government partially shut down at midnight on October 1 (7:00 a.m. Moscow time) due to a lack of funding. This occurred because representatives of the ruling Republican Party and the opposition Democratic Party in Congress were unable to reach an agreement on several spending provisions, including those related to healthcare. Both sides have accused each other of provoking the shutdown and prolonging it for political purposes.