New House Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) said yesterday that he is opposed to one of the biggest recommendations made by the Congressional Advisory Panel on the Governance of the Nuclear Security Enterprise: moving the semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration back under the Department of Energy. “I thought they made a lot of good points,” Thornberry said after a speech at the American Enterprise Institute yesterday, his first as the chairman of the panel. “I certainly don’t agree with all of the points because organizationally they’ve taken us back to the way it was before we created NNSA. I don’t want to go back to those times. Particularly with all of the trouble the Department of Energy has had with other things. We need to get better. We don’t need to go backwards.”
The commission, chaired by former Lockheed Martin CEO Norm Augustine and retired Strategic Command chief Adm. Richard Mies, considered recommending the creation of an independent agency for the NNSA, or moving it to DoD, but it ultimately settled on strengthening the authority and credentials of the Secretary of Energy and the NNSA administrator while moving the agency back under the auspices of DOE, thinking that approach had the best shot of success. If that doesn’t work, it said creating an independent agency should be considered.
The panel will need Congress to go along with its recommendations, and it’s unclear how much traction its recommendations will get. Thornberry hinted yesterday that he was most interested in the overall health of the nation’s nuclear deterrent. “I’m not in favor of walking backwards,” he said. “I don’t know. Reform if you can show me it’s really going to pay off, yes. What I’m concerned about is the credibility of the country’s nuclear deterrent and as these machines age, how to keep that credibility there. So my point is the nuclear deterrent, weapons and delivery systems, will be something we pay a lot of attention to.”
