Congress reached an accord on the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act and was expected to file the conference report explaining the bill’s policy provisions and funding levels late Monday, a lawmaker said at a defense conference this weekend.
“Conferences will be signing the conference report out Monday afternoon and introducing the bill Monday night, and then voting on it on Wednesday,” Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said Saturday at the Reagan National Defense Forum in California. “The hay’s not in the barn yet, but it’s real close to the barn door.”
The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) sets policy and funding ceilings for defense programs, including those at the Department of Energy.
The NDAA report and the appended explainer appended will reveal the choices and compromises, if any, lawmakers made about defense nuclear weapons and cleanup programs managed by DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration and Environmental Management office, respectively.
The House NDAA would allow about $15.8 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration: 4% less than sought by the White House but about 4.5% more than the 2019 budget. The Senate NDAA would authorize the requested funding. The House wants to slow development of the NNSA’s proposed two-state plutonium-pit production complex, and prohibit the deployment of the low-yield, W76-2 submarine-launched ballistic-missile warhead. The Senate bill would do neither of those things.
The Senate and House Armed Services committees both approved versions of NDAA that set defense environmental spending for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management at about $5.6 billion. Defense environmental is the largest bloc of funding for the nuclear cleanup office. During fiscal 2019, DOE defense environmental spending was $6 billion, and the White House requested $5.5 billion for 2020.
