Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) has proposed amending the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act to delay rollout of next-generation intercontinental ballistic missiles and delete a requirement that the National Nuclear Security Administration produce 80 warhead cores annually by 2030.
Garamendi filed the amendments to the annual must-pass defense-policy bill late last week. They are only two of more than 800 proposed amendments that the House Rules Committee was scheduled to consider in a Monday meeting that will set the rules of debate not only for the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), but for a continuing resolution that would extend 2021 budgets into the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. After the committee writes the rules, the bills would be clear to head to the floor later this week.
Garamendi joined with fellow left-leaning California Democrat Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) on an amendment to block funding for the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) intercontinental ballistic missiles until 2031 and to instead rely on the current fleet of Minuteman III missiles for another decade. The amendment would also prohibit the National Nuclear Security Administration from working on the W87-1 warhead that would eventually tip GBSD. Early versions of the missile would use W87-0 warheads, which unlike the W87-1 would not use new plutonium pits in their primary stages.
For the amendment to delete a requirement to produce 80 plutonium pits by 2030, Garamendi joined with Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.). The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is working on pit plants at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C. The agency estimates that the South Carolina plant won’t be up and running until 2032 or 2035, prompting some in Congress to propose lifting a legal requirement that NNSA produce any amount of pits by 2030. NNSA officials have said this year the legal requirement is helpful for reminding lawmakers that the agency needs budgetary support for its pit programs.
The House Rules Committee may not even allow these amendments on to the floor.
In previous NDAA floor debates, amendments to block all or part of pending U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile upgrades have gone down on solidly bipartisan votes. However, progressive Democrats have pointed to growing support in their caucus for such proposals over the years and may again be interested in gauging their colleagues’ appetites for changes to the 30-year, trillion-dollar modernization program the Barack Obama administration started in 2016.
