Congressional leaders said they still wanted to pass the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act before Republicans take control of the House in January, but partisan maneuvering over issues unrelated to Department of Energy nuclear-weapon programs have held the bill up.
The House Rules Committee was scheduled Monday to set the terms of debate for the bill, which would have allowed the lower chamber to begin floor debate the proposal as soon as Tuesday.
However, media reported that the lower chamber wound up sitting on its hands after a GOP effort to repeal the military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate and Senate Democrats’ attempts to tie fossil fuel permitting reform to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) delayed delivery of a final bill to the House Rules Committee.
Both the House and Senate’s 2023 NDAAs authorize about $22 billion for DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration, which is more funding than the White House requested.
Senate authorizers did not go along with the House’s proposed spending bonanza for NNSA’s Stockpile Research, Technology and Engineering programs, but both NDAAs agree that the agency should more funding than President Joe Biden requested to build a plutonium pit factory at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C.
The Senate Armed Services Committee’s bill has about $1.25 billion for Savannah River’s pit plant, compared with about $1.13 billion in the House NDAA. The White House requested $758 million, or roughly $150 million more than the 2022 appropriation. Both NDAA versions have about $22 billion for NNSA.
Authorization bills set policy and spending limits for separate appropriations bills. Appropriations bills deliver money to federal agencies from the treasury.
Like the rest of the government, the Department of Energy’s budget is frozen at 2022 levels under a continuing resolution that Congress passed this fall because lawmakers and the White House could not agree on a new spending plan for fiscal year 2023.
The continuing resolution was scheduled to expire Dec. 16 but Congress could extend it further.
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the DOE sub-agency in charge of nuclear weapons, is refurbishing multiple nuclear weapons and working on multiple construction projects to support future nuclear weapons manufacturing.
With those balls up in the air, the agency could have “a lot of problems” if Congress stretches 2022 budgets much further than the first three months of calendar year 2023, NNSA Administrator Jill Hruby told attendees of a webcast forum last week.
