With a deficit deal in place, the House and Senate now plan to write the annual bill authorizing budgets for Department of Energy defense-nuclear programs by June 23.
Disrupted by negotiations over spending levels and U.S. borrowing authority, markups of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) are now set to resume next week, according to statements released by the House and Senate Armed Services Committees on Monday.
The House Armed Services Committee strategic forces subcommittee planned to mark up portions of the NDAA that include DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration and most of the Office of Environmental Management on July 13. The Senate Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee plans its markup for June 20.
House NDAA markups are open while Senate NDAA markups are closed.
Most of the debate over nuclear weapons programs handled by DOE’s semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) happens during the full committee markup of the NDAA. The House Armed Services Committee planned to mark up the complete bill on June 20. The full Senate committee planned to finish its markup by June 23.
The House committee’s NDAA markup is ordinarily a marathon, all-nighter affair packed with speeches, amendments and long roll-call votes. The Senate committee typically hashes out a deal behind closed doors and briefs the media quickly on some of the bill’s highlights.
The NDAA sets policy and spending limits for defense programs, including those at DOE. Bills that authorize funding, such as the NDAA, need not necessarily hold to the spending caps imposed by the deficit deal, the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023. However, appropriations committees, which write the bills that provide treasury funding for agencies, must.
The deficit deal would cap defense discretionary spending, the category that includes most DOE nuclear weapons programs, at roughly President Joe Biden’s requested level of $886 billion.
The White House requested about $23.8 billion for the NNSA in fiscal year 2024, an increase of about $1.5 billion from the current appropriation. For the Office of Environmental Management, the administration seeks about $8.3 billion, roughly the same as the 2023 budget.
