The House of Representatives on Tuesday evening overwhelmingly approved a unified 2018 defense policy bill that would authorize a new ground-launched cruise missile program, continue construction of a plutonium-conversion facility the White House wants to cancel, and allow the National Nuclear Security Administration to start building a new headquarters branch in New Mexico.
The House voted 356-70 to approve the unified version of the fiscal 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that a bicameral conference committee released last week. The bill reconciles the differing versions of the annual defense policy proposal the House and Senate produced over the summer.
The Senate must now approve the legislation before it can go to President Donald Trump’s desk for a signature. No floor vote was scheduled in the upper chamber at deadline Tuesday for Weapons Complex Morning Briefing.
If approved by the Senate and signed by the president, this year’s NDAA would authorize:
- About $340 million to construct the Mixed Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C. That is $70 million more than the White House requested for the budget year that began on Oct. 1 to close down the facility.
- $98 million to build a new office building for some 1,200 National Nuclear Security Administration employees in Albuquerque, N.M. That is in line with the administration’s fiscal 2018 request.
- $58 million to research and develop capabilities that could allow the U.S. to field a new ground-launched cruise missile that could operate in the range prohibited by the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty: a major nuclear-arms pact the U.S. says Russia has violated by testing and deploying a short-range cruise missile.
The bill also authorizes the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board to continue operating with an annual budget of just over $30 million. Board Chairman Sean Sullivan has proposed that the White House ask Congress to eliminate the independent nuclear health-and-safety watchdog.
Authorization bills are viewed as policy guidelines and spending caps for congressional appropriations committees that actually set annual budgets for federal agencies.
