The Department of Defense would get more control over the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons budget under the Senate version of the fiscal 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which was unveiled Tuesday.
The Senate Armed Services Committee filed the text of the bill, which sets funding limits and policy for defense programs, late in the evening. The panel approved the $740 billion legislation earlier this month, with the full Senate expected to take it up in July.
The measure authorizes the roughly $20 billion budget that National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty wanted for her agency: a 20% year-over-year raise that her boss, Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette, opposed during the internal 2021 DOE budget debate.
Gordon-Hagerty backed up her request with a yearlong internal NNSA study, details of which appeared on Capitol Hill in January, about a month before the final budget drop. Also in January, like-minded lawmakers from Capitol Hill appeared in the Oval Office to urge President Donald Trump to go along with the number the NNSA favored.
Following those events, first reported by The Dispatch and Roll Call, senators decided to sharpen existing laws about how the civilian nuclear weapons agency clears its budget request with the Pentagon and the broader DOE.
Under the Senate committee’s NDAA, the joint DOE-Pentagon Nuclear Weapons Council would vet the NNSA’s budget request before it goes to the White House Office of Management and Budget for final approval. If the council thinks the budget request is adequate, it must tell the secretary of energy so. If the council thinks the NNSA isn’t seeking enough money for any given weapons program, it can tell the secretary of energy that as well. The secretary would then be required to request that funding for NNSA.
The energy secretary would also be authorized to raise any concerns about the council’s directive with the Office of Management and Budget, and what NNSA budget he or she would prefer, according to the committee’s bill.
An NNSA spokesperson on Wednesday said it had adhered to the “routine, deliberative budgeting process” in developing its 2021 budget in cooperation with the Department of Energy and White House Office of Management and Budget.
Also, as reported by media last week, the committee’s NDAA includes language from Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) that authorizes $10 million to speed up preparations for a nuclear explosive test, “if necessary.” Funding for test preparations would have to come out of the NNSA’s Stockpile Responsiveness Program, according to the legislative text.
The Washington Post reported in May that the Donald Trump administration discussed conducting a nuclear-explosive test, which the NNSA has eschewed for decades, as a means of convincing Russia and China to discuss a new trilateral nuclear arms control treaty.
Editor’s note, 06/24/2020, 5:36 p.m. The story was updated with links to outside reporting about internal DOE budget negotiations during the winter of 2019-20, with a comment from the NNSA, and to clarify the timeline of events during internal DOE budget deliberations.
