The full House is expected to consider the fiscal year 2018 defense authorization bill (H.R. 2810) late in the week of July 10 to 14.
House members have submitted hundreds of potential amendments to the House Rules Committee, which will sift through them and decide which can be debated on the House floor. Among them is an amendment by Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) that would bar the sale of F-35 fighters to Turkey until the U.S. president certifies that Turkey is cooperating in the investigation of Turkish bodyguards who allegedly assaulted protesters in Washington, D.C., in May.
The wide-ranging policy bill, which the House Armed Services Committee approved in late June, would set up a separate space corps within the Air Force Department. It also calls for developing a new fleet of space-based sensors for missile defense.
The House defense legislation would authorize up to $14.2 billion for the Department of Energy’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration. That is slightly more than the $13.9 billion the requested by the agency tasked with sustaining the U.S. nuclear deterrent and carrying out nuclear nonproliferation programs around the world.
The bill features language calling for continued construction of the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility at DOE’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina, which would convert 34 metric tons of surplus nuclear weapon-usable plutonium into commercial nuclear reactor fuel. That comes despite efforts by DOE, in both the Obama and Trump administrations, to terminate the project in favor of the “dilute and dispose” alternative the department says would be far cheaper and faster.
