on the free c-span radio app. on thursday, the fbi, a former senior official for the counter intelligence division will testify surrounding the 2016 presidential election and the clinton email investigation. coverage starts at 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span three, all mine c-span.org and the c-span free radio app. the u.s. senate begins its session in about 10 minutes. until then a portion of today's "washington journal" on the cost of securing nuclear materials. >> every monday your money segment. today we are focusing on the cost of protecting our nuclear weapons. joining us is john donnelly. we've been looking into this topic tiered what have you learned? >> i have done a few stories in

the last few years on the subject because, i think, even people that follow the federal budget are not necessarily aware of the extent of spending on so-called defense nuclear nonproliferation programs in the energy department, programs meant to safeguard the supplies of nuclearhe materials, keep thm out of the hands of terrace, a sickly, declining dramatically over the last years. this is not a partisan issue. let me say that right away. under president obama, despite his rhetorical attention to this problem, after his first few years, spending started declining. president trump has continued that way. in fact in the last eight years, if president trumps edge it is enacted as presented, there will have been and eight teen% decline in spending on these programs. looking out over the next few

years, president trump wants to increase them at seven and a half% rate. really not enough to even keep pace with inflation. there hasti been a real shrinkig of it. yet there is no indication that the threat has the client it anyway. >> in terms of numbers, what are we talking about? >> i'm glad you asked. we are spending over a billion dollars. $1.25 billion for these programs by comparison, the energy energy department is requesting nuclearion for warheads.d those two programs are in the same organization. national nuclear administration. they are competing within the same budget pie. critics and arms control advocatesic are concerned that s nuclear weapon spending has increased and it has gone up 60% in the energy department in

those samerg years i just went over with you, 11-19, as that money has gone up, it has crowded out spending. >> the u.s. spending left nuclear bomb materials. why did you start researching this topic? what ledo you to it? >> in 2014, when dianne feinstein, the california democrat in the senate, she was sharing the energy and water subcommittee, she did a report accompanying her spending bill. it was one of the most alarming, eexcuse me, reports i've ever seen come out of congress talking about thousands of sites, even here in the u.s. university and medical facilities that have radiological materials and about 80% of them, them, the report said, were not secure. i started watching the threat

and i started watching how, despite rhetoric, both obama and trump, to the effect of this is one of the greatest national security threats that we face, et cetera, et cetera. there were some good reasons for it to go down. the united states and russia are no longer cooperating on the programs. in addition, some of of the efforts of international efforts to control and safeguard nuclear materials were not being very efficiently ran. funding was kind r of backing u. there was a bottleneck. the argument was, we can't really spend much more than we are spending right now. that argument has stood for several years now. what critics say is, come on. the problem has not gone away. surely we can find other ways if the current programs are not working. we can find other ways to use the money that will be more effective. feinstein is now the ranking member of that energy water

subcommittee and she tells me that she is waiting for a plan from them trump administration. come up with some new approaches >> see-throughsp rollcall. in terms of the mechanics of protecting and securing nuclear materials, what is involved? >> it kind of runs the gamut. everything you can think of from fences to alarms too, obviously, there is the detecting of materials that may be in transport. radio activity monitors. and increasingly cyber security is a concern. it turns out that many of the countries that have either weapons usable materials like highly enriched uranium and -- or medical purposes, for example , many of them do not have any kind of cyber security

safeguards. there has been some progress in recent years that i should note. there are countries that have, south america, in particular, that have just gotten rid of all their usable materials. there is less of it around. there was this huge focus on it from 2010-2016. nuclear security summits. one every couple years. they are not happening anymore. this is one reason i wanted to write the story. the world's attention is waning to this problem. it seems like we have, you know, islamic state was all anybody talked about a couple years ago. it seems like there is a mono mania almost. we can only focus on one thing at a time. now the defense department, all they want to talk about is russia and china as a threat.

in terms of focus of national leadership. terrorism has started to proceed from thee front page. in fact, it has receded. >> trying to build nuclear bombs safeguarding the atomic materials dng. president donald trump plans to keep it that way according to budget documents. what is the reaction then on capitol hill? >> this is very much a lower tier issue. not the kind of thing you hear people t giving speeches on the senate floor about. >> until something happens. >> god for bid. if it does happen, i don't think people will be very satisfied with an answer like, well, our programs with the russians discontinued. that's why we did not do enough. there were bottlenecks in the funding of this program. that is why we did not do enough

obviously, people will ask a lot of hard questions. it is the kind of thing that you ask the hard questions later, unfortunately. >> you can join in on the conversation. we are focus on your money this monday morning. yes how much we aren't or are spending. 202-748-8000. that is a line for democrats. if you are an independent 202-748-8002. john is joining us from ohio. >> good morning. i think we have a more serious problem here with our mining. what happens to america when the united states no longer honors world currency? >> i do not know that that is really an issue. the dollar is pretty darn strong right now. i'm getting ready to go to europe very soon and i'm happy

about that. >> where these materials stored, generally speaking? >> all over the place. we are talking thousands of facilities. uranium, plutonium, highly enriched uranium and then there is a civilian uses, i mention the thousands of sites in the united states and thousands more overseas. thousands of tons of this stuff. for example, in cancer treatment , they use cobalt 60. a radioisotope. that stuff is in medical facilities all around the world. there was a facility and mows all and iraq that had cobalt 60. there was some concern that the islamic state would know that, figure it out and get to the material. thank goodness they did not. that stuff is all around the world. nuclear security