The House Armed Services Committee fell in line with their counterparts on the Appropriations Committee on Monday, proposing to authorize a 2020 defense-nuclear budget that nixes the Donald Trump administration’s proposal to cut legacy weapons cleanup to fund looming nuclear-weapon programs.
The proposal is part of the Committee’s 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which at deadline for Weapons Complex Morning Briefing was scheduled for a marathon markup in the full Armed Services Committee on Wednesday. Senior Committee aides told reporters last week that the markup might go on well past midnight.
The NDAA sets policy and annual spending limits for the legacy nuclear-weapons cleanup managed by DOE’s Environmental Management Office, and the active nuclear-weapons programs managed by the semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).
House Republicans are already upset about the proposed NDAA and could offer amendments to thwart the Democratic majority’s proposal to authorize around $15.9 billion for NNSA in 2020: around 4% less than requested, but still around a 4.5% increase compared with the 2019 budget.
For NNSA, the NDAA would prohibit the Pentagon from deploying the low-yield W76-2 submarine-launched, ballistic missile warheads NNSA is assembling this year at the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas. The NDAA also would hold spending for NNSA’s Plutonium Sustainment Account at about $470 million: about two thirds of what the White House sought.
With that level of spending, NNSA might have to slow-roll construction of a proposed plutonium pit plant at the Savannah River Site, or use funding from other Department of Energy programs to design the facility in 2020.
Under the proposed NDAA, most of the funding the White House requested for NNSA would instead be authorized for the Environmental Management Office. That would push proposed funding for the office’s Defense Nuclear portfolio — which includes the largest and most contaminated Cold War weapons sites — close to $6 billion.
The House committee’s NDAA essentially mirrors the funding levels the House Appropriations already approved for NNSA and the Environmental Management Office as part of a 2020 Energy and Water spending bill headed to the House Floor Wednesday. The spending bill is one of several in a minibus package of 2020 appropriations acts.
Meanwhile, the Senate Armed Services Committee has already approved its own version of the 2020 NDAA, which authorizes all the NNSA funding requested by the White House. Senate leadership had not scheduled the bill for a vote at deadline.
