•HRES 317 IH 
negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating 
to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date 
and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general 
and complete disarmament under strict and effective 
international control’’; 
Whereas President Ronald Reagan said in his January 1984 
State of the Union Address that ‘‘A nuclear war cannot 
be won and must never be fought. The only value in our 
two nations possessing nuclear weapons is to make sure 
they will never be used. But then would it not be better 
to do away with them entirely?’’; 
Whereas, according to scientific studies and models, the use 
of even a tiny fraction of these weapons could cause 
worldwide climate disruption and global famine by lofting 
millions of tons of soot into the upper atmosphere, which 
would cause climate disruption across the planet, cutting 
food production and putting hundreds of millions of peo-
ple worldwide at risk of death due to famine; 
Whereas, according to numerous scientific studies and mod-
els, a large-scale nuclear war would kill hundreds of mil-
lions of people directly and cause unimaginable physical 
destruction and environmental damage, including even 
more severe catastrophic climate disruption due to lower 
temperatures across the planet not seen since the last ice 
age; 
Whereas, during the course of the nuclear age, there have 
been technical miscalculations, misinterpretations of ad-
versary behavior, and crises that have led to numerous 
nuclear near-misses that could have led to nuclear war; 
Whereas the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine by the Rus-
sian Federation and the Kremlin’s repeated explicit 
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•HRES 317 IH 
threats to use nuclear weapons have significantly in-
creased the risk of nuclear weapons use; 
Whereas tensions elsewhere in the world, including between 
the United States and China over Taiwan and the South 
China Sea, ongoing tensions between India and Pakistan, 
and the chronic security crisis on the Korean Peninsula, 
constitute other possible flashpoints for nuclear war; 
Whereas, on October 6, 2022, President Biden said, ‘‘I don’t 
think there’s any such thing as an ability to easily use 
a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armaged-
don.’’; 
Whereas the United States retains a Cold War-era nuclear 
declaratory policy that allows for the first use of nuclear 
weapons against nonnuclear threats under ‘‘extreme’’ cir-
cumstances and retains a launch-under-attack posture 
that unnecessarily compresses Presidential decision time 
to launch nuclear weapons within minutes, thereby cre-
ating conditions that increase the risk of unintentional or 
accidental nuclear war; 
Whereas, in 2023, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) 
estimated that current plans to modernize, upgrade, and 
maintain United States nuclear forces, as described in 
the fiscal year 2023 budget and supporting documents, 
would cost $756,000,000,000 over the 2023–2032 period, 
which was $122,000,000,000 more than CBO’s 2021 es-
timate for the 2021–2030 period; 
Whereas, in October 2017, CBO estimated that the Nuclear 
Modernization Plan to upgrade and enhance nearly every 
element of the nuclear arsenal of the United States would 
result in costs of more than $1,200,000,000,000 over the 
following 30 years, not adjusting for inflation; 
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•HRES 317 IH 
Whereas Republican and Democratic administrations have 
negotiated multiple agreements with the Russian Federa-
tion that have reduced their total nuclear stockpiles by 
more than 80 percent since their Cold War peaks, but in 
recent years have withdrawn from other global treaties 
and agreements that have provided global stability and 
helped prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons, in-
cluding the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty; 
Whereas the 2022 Nuclear Posture Review states that 
‘‘[m]utual, verifiable nuclear arms control offers the most 
effective, durable, and responsible path to reduce the role 
of nuclear weapons in our strategy and prevent their 
use’’; 
Whereas the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, 
which is the last remaining treaty limiting the size of 
United States and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals, 
will expire on February 5, 2026, and in the absence of 
agreed following constraints, each side could significantly 
increase the number of deployed warheads, thereby accel-
erating an unconstrained, costly, and dangerous global 
nuclear arms race; 
Whereas, on July 7, 2017, 122 nations voted to adopt the 
Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which 
prohibits the possession, use, testing, stationing, or trans-
fer of nuclear weapons and creates an important legal 
framework for the elimination of all nuclear weapons and 
entered into force on January 22, 2021; and 
Whereas the United States suspended nuclear explosive test-
ing in 1992, successfully led the negotiation of the 1996 
Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which has been 
signed by 187 countries including the United States and 
the other P–5 nuclear powers, and has effectively put an 
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•HRES 317 IH 
end to nuclear test explosions, which can be used by 
newer nuclear powers with the means to prove new war-
head designs: Now, therefore, be it 
Resolved, That the House of Representatives calls on 
the President to— 
(1) actively pursue a world free of nuclear 
weapons as a national security imperative; and 
(2) lead a global effort to move the world back 
from the nuclear brink, halt and reverse a global nu-
clear arms race, and prevent nuclear war by— 
(A) engaging in good faith negotiations 
with the other 8 nuclear armed states to halt 
any further buildup of nuclear arsenals and to 
aggressively pursue a verifiable and irreversible 
agreement or agreements to verifiably reduce 
and eliminate their nuclear arsenals according 
to negotiated timetables, and, in particular, 
pursuing and concluding new nuclear arms con-
trol and disarmament arrangements with the 
Russian Federation to prevent a buildup of nu-
clear forces beyond current levels, and engaging 
with China on mutual nuclear risk reduction 
and arms control measures; 
(B) leading the effort to have all nuclear- 
armed states renounce the option of using nu-
clear weapons first; 
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•HRES 317 IH 
(C) implementing effective checks and bal-
ances on the Commander in Chief’s sole author-
ity to order the use of United States nuclear 
weapons; 
(D) ending the Cold War-era ‘‘hair-trigger 
alert’’ posture, which increases the risk of cata-
strophic miscalculation in a crisis; 
(E) ending plans to produce and deploy 
new nuclear warheads and delivery systems, 
which would reduce the burden on United 
States taxpayers; 
(F) maintaining the de facto global mora-
torium on nuclear explosive testing; 
(G) protecting communities and workers 
affected by nuclear weapons by fully remedi-
ating the deadly legacy of environmental con-
tamination from past and current nuclear weap-
ons testing, development, production, storage, 
and maintenance activities, and by providing 
health monitoring, compensation, and medical 
care to those who have and will be harmed by 
nuclear weapons research, testing, and produc-
tion, including through an expanded Radiation 
Exposure Compensation Act program; and 
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•HRES 317 IH 
(H) actively planning a just economic tran-
sition for the civilian and military workforce in-
volved in the development, testing, production, 
management, and dismantlement of nuclear 
weapons and for the communities that are eco-
nomically dependent on nuclear weapons labora-
tories, production facilities, and military bases. 
Æ 
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