The new federal budget caps deal provides $2.5 billion more in base defense spending than the 2020 budget the House of Representatives has already approved, and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) would need a 25% share of the extra funding to reach its preferred nuclear-weapon budget.
To get the money, the semiautonomous Department of Energy agency will either have to compete with the entire Department of Defense or find another source elsewhere within its parent agency, as the Donald Trump administration proposed in March. Otherwise, it will have to make do with less funding than it wanted.
The House on Thursday passed a two-year, $2.7 trillion budget agreement on a 284-149 vote, a move that would allow the federal government to keep borrowing money.
The pact would permit $666.5 billion in base defense spending for fiscal 2020. In appropriations legislation passed in June, the House provided around $664 billion in base defense spending for the budget year that begins Oct. 1. The NNSA, the defense environmental cleanup portion of DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM), and other departmental defense programs represent roughly $22.5 billion of that total.
In its 2020 Energy and Water budget bill, the House rejected the administration’s proposal to increase funding for the NNSA while decreasing funding for EM and other DOE programs. The lower chamber approved $15.9 billion for the NNSA — some $600 million below the request — while EM’s defense environmental cleanup account got over $6 billion, or nearly $490 more than the request.
The Senate could vote on the caps deal next week, after the House leaves Washington for its annual August recess. The Senate Appropriations Committee has yet to produce any 2020 spending bills; if it waits until after the upper chamber’s scheduled August recess, it would have under three weeks to write, debate, and pass the bills, then iron out any differences with House appropriators.
