The House and Senate will soon hash out their differences on a fiscal 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would sustain a major nonproliferation construction project in South Carolina and call for development of a new intermediate-range missile.
The House and Senate each passed differing versions of the bill this summer, and the Senate on Tuesday approved a motion to go to conference: the formal term for the bicameral meeting of lawmakers aimed at producing a unified bill for President Donald Trump to sign.
The Senate also appointed conferees Tuesday: the members of its Armed Services Committee. They are led by panel Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Ranking Member Jack Reed (D-R.I.).
The Senate follows the House, which approved a motion to go to conference and appointed conferees Thursday. It was not clear at deadline Tuesday exactly when the conference would begin, though the Senate’s action removed the last hurdle for joint negotiations on the bill.
The House passed its NDAA in July. The bill authorizes more than $14 billion in funding for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) for the budget year that began on Oct. 1. The Senate’s NDAA, passed in September, would authorize up to $14.5 billion for NNSA in fiscal 2018.
Both chambers’ defense authorization bills direct continued construction of the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility at DOE’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. The facility would convert 34 metric tons of surplus nuclear-weapon plutonium into fuel for commercial power plants. The Trump administration, like the Obama administration before it, wants to cancel the project and instead dilute the plutonium at Savannah River, blend it with concrete-like grout, and bury the mixture at the Energy Department’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.
Meanwhile, the House NDAA would create a new “program of record” for a missile system capable of hitting targets in the range prohibited by the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia, which the U.S. says Russia has violated. The House bill would condition further U.S. adherence to the treaty on Russia’s own compliance. The Senate’s NDAA, on the other hand, authorizes $65 million for a research and development program for a dual-capable, road-mobile, ground-launched missile system within the range prohibited by the treaty.
