The House had yet to approve its version of the fiscal year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act Thursday morning, but after a day of floor debate, the bill seemed all but certain to authorize more funding for Department of Energy nuclear weapons than requested, plus permission to continue work on a nuclear-tipped, sea-launched cruise missile.
On Wednesday, the full House shot down a proposal to undo the Armed Services Committee’s plan to boost authorized defense spending some $37 billion above President Joe Biden’s request for the year. Lawmakers also reached across the aisle to kill a Democratic amendment that would have stopped the Air Force from replacing Minuteman III nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles with new Sentinel missiles starting in 2030 or so.
If the bill passes the House without further nuclear weapons or spending amendments — votes were scheduled for Thursday — it could soon be reconciled with the Senate’s version of the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which also authorizes the continuation of the sea-launched nuclear-tipped cruise missile the White House wanted to cancel.
However, DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) will only see the authorized funding, including for the missile, if separate appropriations bills provide it — and House appropriators already have decided not to do so.
In a bill up for debate on the House floor next week, the House Appropriations Committee would provide no funding for the sea-launched missile but would fund continued maintenance of the B83 nuclear gravity bomb, which the Biden administration also wanted to cancel.
The House Appropriations bill would give the NNSA about $21 billion for fiscal year 2023, which begins Oct. 1. That is about $180 million less than the request and about $1 billion less than what the House-side NDAA would authorize, if House lawmakers pass that bill this week in its current form.
The Senate Appropriations Committee planned to publish the upper chamber’s draft appropriations bills by the end of July, committee leadership said Tuesday in a press release.
