The House and Senate both passed the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act with veto proof margins this week, sending the bill to President Trump’s desk where it remained at deadline Friday. The president had threatened to veto the measure, and its nuclear-weapons policies, for reasons unrelated to defense spending.
Also this week, Congress approved a one week extension for the short-term spending bill that had held federal budgets at 2020 levels and was set to expire on Friday. The budget freeze will now continue through Dec. 18 while lawmakers try to negotiate a longer-term deal.
At deadline, Trump had not signed the budget extension but still had hours to do so before appropriations ran out and triggered a partial government shutdown. The freeze has the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) underfunded by about $3 billion, relative to its 2021 request.
The Senate approved the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on Friday by 84-16. The House approved the bill Monday 300-135, with every member voting. The legislature can override a presidential veto if both chambers agree, by a two-thirds majority, to do so.
Among other things, the latest NDAA would allow the Pentagon-controlled Nuclear Weapons Council to give a formal thumbs up or thumbs down to DOE’s nuclear-weapons budget request each year before the request goes to the White House for final approval. The bill also appeared to hedge against a possible delay in plutonium pit production.
For NNSA’s active nuclear weapons and nonproliferation programs, the NDAA authorizes roughly the $20 billion requested. That’s about $3 billion over the 2020 budget. House appropriators declined to match that request in a spending bill passed this summer, proposing about $18 billion instead. The Senate Appropriations Committee in November finally published draft appropriations bills, including one that proposed the requested 2021 funding for the NNSA.
The 2021 NDAA also appeared to leave the door open for production of plutonium pits, fissile cores for nuclear weapons, to slip up to five years. Under current law, NNSA must start producing multiple war-ready pits in 2024.
The compromise NDAA would require the secretary of energy to produce an independent cost estimate about the NNSA’s planned two-state pit enterprise, portions of which are in the early phases of construction.
If the independent report ordered by the NDAA finds that the high-end cost of certain pit programs exceed DOE’s initial estimates, the commander of U.S. Strategic Command would have to certify that the current legal deadline for NNSA to be able to produce pits could not slip by more than five years before affecting military confidence in the nuclear arsenal.
Under current law, the secretary of energy must ensure that the NNSA is able to produce: qualification pits in fiscal 2021; at least 10 war-ready pits by fiscal 2024; at least 20 pits by 2025; at least 30 pits by 2026; and at least 80 pits by 2030.
