House lawmakers on Tuesday officially moved to start final negotiations with the Senate on the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, but partisan gridlock in the Senate threatened to limit progress on budget negotiations this week to a stopgap spending bill, or continuing resolution.
The House late Tuesday queued up a vote for either Thursday or Friday on a continuing resolution, the text of which had not been published at deadline for Weapons Complex Morning Briefing. Reports have indicated the bill would keep the federal government operating at largely current funding levels to Nov. 21, nearly two months past the Oct. 1 start of the 2020 fiscal year.
Assuming no special treatment for Department of Energy nuclear programs, budgets for key agency branches, in rough terms, would be:
- Just over $15 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s portfolio of nuclear weapons, nonproliferation, and naval reactor programs.
- Just over $7 billion for the Office of Environmental Management’s cleanup of shuttered Manhattan Project and Cold War nuclear weapons production sites.
Both DOE branches would get year-over-year raises under proposed 2020 spending bills passed by the House and awaiting votes in the Senate.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, regulatory of civilian nuclear power and waste, would continue at an annualized rate of roughly $900 million, under a clean continuing resolution.
Also on Tuesday, the House voted to proceed to conference negotiations with the Senate on the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Reps. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) and Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), the chair and ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, will lead the lower chamber’s negotiating team.
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who during NDAA committee negotiations this summer was the chief spokesperson for GOP lawmakers who opposed the Democratic majority’s plan to slow development of new nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles and their fissile plutonium-pit cores, got a spot on the conference committee.
NDAA negotiations will start Thursday, according to a press release Wednesday from the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The House NDAA would authorize about $15.8 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration for 2020 and just under $5.6 billion for the largest spending line in the Office of Environmental Management: Defense Environmental Cleanup. The Senate’s 2020 NDAA authorizes $16.5 billion as requested for the National Nuclear Security Administration and around $5.5 billion as requested for Environmental Management defense cleanup.
The Senate’s GOP majority plans to call a floor vote on a package of appropriations bills that include the Department of Energy’s 2020 budget, but Senate Democrats have threatened to block debate on the measure because of their objections to using defense and other funding to pay for President Donald Trump’s proposed southern-border wall.
