$430 more million dollars in this year’s budget for the UPF bomb plant brings the total for design only to $2 billion! Aside from secret meetings between TN Senator Lamar Alexander, who is bankrolling the bomb plant, and the project managers who are spending the money, there is NO accountability for this money. OREPA hopes to end that with Tell the Taxpayer! ” a campaign based on the simple premise that we have a right to know how our money is being (mis)spent.
Incredibly, when asked directly, Senator Alexander’s staff insists he still believes the project will not break his magic $6.5 billion cap. Of course, that number is a fairy number, plucked from thin air, because the Senator knows if the real price tag for the modernization of Y-12 were to be revealed, Congress would refuse to fund it.
Meanwhile, here are just a few things that Tennessee could do with $6.5 billion dollars if it were not being wasted on a bomb plant:
100 teachers, for 8 years, in every county in Tennessee
118,000 Habitat for Humanity homes
5 new state-of-the art schools in every county in TN
17 iPads for every student enrolled in K-12 in TN
Health insurance for 1,000,000 uninsured TN families
2.1 billion school lunches
1,800 years of Anderson County/Oak Ridge Head Start
Well, you get the picture. You can read more about the budget shenanigans surrounding the modernization of the Y12 Nuclear Weapons Complex in the June UPF UPDate. Scroll down to the bottom of the page, look in the right hand column”¦
