The House of Represenatives on Wednesday approved a fiscal 2020 spending bill that would provide more funding than requested by the White House to clean up nuclear weapons sites and less funding that requested for active weapons programs.
The Democrat-led House approved the bill on an essentially party line vote of 226-203. The so-called minibus spending measure funds the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense, and other federal agencies including the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The DOE portion of the bill contains just over $7 billion for the Office of Environmental Management’s cleanup of Cold War nuclear sites, and just under $16 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) nuclear weapons and nonproliferation programs. Those numbers are, respectively, about $700 million above and $600 million below what the Trump administration requested for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) would get roughly $885 million, under the bill: about $22.5 million less than requested. The bill would provide no money for DOE’s application to license Yucca Mountain in Nevada with the NRC as a permanent civil-defense nuclear waste repository. Instead, despite efforts by that program’s backers in the House, it only directs $48.5 million to separate “integreated waste management” activities.
Now that the House has approved the minibus, the Senate Appropriations Committee is clear to write and debate its own 2020 spending proposals. However, appropriators in the upper chamber had not scheduled any markups at deadline for Weapons Complex Morning Briefing.
The Senate is controlled by a GOP majority that closely resembles a group that last year voted in favor of just about all the defense-nuclear programs the House wants to pare back in 2020. However, the Senate last year did not approve any funding for Yucca Mountain and has not promised to provide any money this year.
When nuclear matters cropped up during floor debate of the House minibus, they centered on nuclear weapons programs — and then, mostly on Pentagon programs.
One change to the NNSA portion of the bill amendment squeaked through on a party-line vote as part of a package of amendments: a directive to provide $5 million more for the agency’s Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation account to continue researching the use of low-enriched uranium as fuel for nuclear-powered warships and submarines. The amendment would provide the program with $25 million for 2020.
On Tuesday, the House shot down one amendment that would have allowed the Navy to deploy the low-yield, submarine-launched W76-2 ballistic missile warhead, and another that would have prohibited the Pentagon from working on its proposed Long-Range Standoff Weapon: the cruise missile planned to replace the 1980s-vintage Air-Launched Cruise Missile in 2025.
