Congress jettisons nuclear bomb funds. (Hat tip: Defense Tech.)

Congress, in a surprising blow to the Bush administration’s nuclear weapons ambitions, has eliminated funding for two major bomb research programs, including a so-called bunker buster that the president had said was essential to the country’s security.

Relatively small amounts of money are involved — tens of millions of dollars — and the new weapons-research programs could be revived in later years. But the cuts agreed to by the House and the Senate, in which influential Republicans joined with Democratic opponents of the programs, amounted to a rejection of a major part of Bush’s nuclear defense strategy.

“This has always been a hard sell,” said David Smith, the chief operating officer of the National Institute for Public Policy, a conservative-leaning think tank that formulated what became the president’s basic weapons strategy in 2000 and that placed many of its members in the administration. “The problem is the public — and the Congress reflects this — just doesn’t understand the role of nuclear weapons in the post-Cold War world.

”We just don’t seem to be able to turn the corner even on researching what’s doable with new kinds of weapons. Bumper stickers aren’t going to accomplish some of the missions this country is going to face.“

Opponents of the new programs were ecstatic.

”This responsible decision demonstrates the growing bipartisan concern and distrust of the Bush administration’s irresponsible and risky nuclear policy,“ Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Walnut Creek, said in a statement after the appropriations bill was passed last weekend.

”The administration is using the war on terrorism as a flimsy excuse to find new uses for existing nuclear weapons and new nuclear weapons — weapons that the Pentagon hasn’t even officially asked for.”