Obama Vetoes NDAA, House Schedules Override Vote

By Brian Bradley

Alissa Tabirian and Brian Bradley
WC Monitor
10/23/2015

President Barack Obama yesterday vetoed the fiscal 2016 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that authorized his $611.9 billion request for defense discretionary spending, including $5.1 billion for defense environmental cleanup. The NDAA also proposed boosting authorized cleanup funds for the Hanford Site in Washington state to $915.8 million, $72 million above Obama’s request, according to the bill’s conference report. All of those increased funds were authorized for “river corridor and other cleanup operations.” The bill also matched the White House’s requests of $1.4 billion to fund the Office of River Protection at Hanford and $690 million for the site’s Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant. It would’ve authorized $1.2 billion for the Savannah River Site, which includes radioactive liquid tank waste and the Salt Waste Processing Facility.

Furthermore, the bill would’ve authorized the Obama administration’s $357.8 million request for Idaho cleanup and waste disposition, its $243.3 million request for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico—which includes ongoing plant maintenance and construction—and its $177.4 million request for the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee. The bill also proposed zeroing out Obama’s request for a $471.8 million fiscal 2016 contribution to the Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund.

Obama vetoed the bill in opposition to the use of Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) funding to avoid caps on the base budget. In a White House statement released yesterday, Obama said the bill “falls woefully short” because it maintains budget cuts under sequestration and prevents military modernization reforms and the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.

The House and Senate Armed Services Committee chairmen called the veto “reckless, cynical, and downright dangerous” in a joint statement released yesterday. According to the statement, the House will hold an override vote on Nov. 5. However, it remains unclear whether there will be sufficient votes to overturn the veto.

Speaking earlier in the week, the HASC and SASC heads said Obama’s veto would jeopardize the bill’s defense acquisition reform provisions.

In a pre-veto appearance at the Brookings Institution, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) said that if Obama rejected an “overwhelmingly bipartisan” bill that was “authorized to the level that the president requested,” then “he is placing a higher priority over his concern and opposition to the funding budgetary mechanism than he is over the defense of the country.”

“It is not a money bill,” he added. “The money is in the Appropriations Committee, so if he has a problem with the level of appropriations, then it seems to me that fight should be with the appropriators.”

Regarding the president’s objection to using OCO funding to avoid base budget caps, McCain said, “[Obama] has accepted other bills with OCO in it,” He added. “It is not as if this is a brand-new problem.”

Thornberry and McCain both warned of the impact of the continuing resolution (CR) currently funding the federal government through Dec. 11 at fiscal 2015 enacted levels, passed several weeks ago to prevent a government shutdown. Thornberry noted that CR funding offers no flexibility to accommodate defense acquisitions, while McCain called the CR “incredibly damaging to our ability to defend this nation.”

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Nuclear Security & Deterrence Vol. 19 No. 40
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Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor

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October 23, 2015

Obama Vetoes NDAA, House Schedules Override Vote

By Alissa Tabirian

Alissa Tabirian
NS&D Monitor
10/23/2015

President Barack Obama yesterday vetoed the fiscal 2016 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that authorized his $611.9 billion request for defense discretionary spending, including $12.5 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). The bill championed various NNSA upgrades, including funding for deferred maintenance to address aging laboratory infrastructure, a governance and management reform initiative to improve the efficiency of the nuclear security enterprise, and a stockpile responsiveness program to maintain weapons design and development capabilities alongside the agency’s existing Stockpile Stewardship Program. It also called for the development of military responses to potential Russian violations of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.

Speaking earlier in the week, the HASC and SASC heads said Obama’s veto would jeopardize the bill’s defense acquisition reform provisions.

Acquisition reforms highlighted in the NDAA conference report summary include “the consolidation of at least six separate reporting requirements into a single, living document,” a reduction in barriers to multiyear contracts, permanent hiring and training funds for acquisition personnel, use of value engineering that enlists contractors in cost-saving efforts, and modification of the chain of command to streamline processes “currently mired in layers of bureaucracy.”

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) emphasized the acquisition reform plan. “If it continues to take us 20 years to field a new airplane, that airplane is going to be hopelessly out of date by the time it gets there. We’ve got to do better,” he said, adding that the bill focuses on “thinning out some of the regulations” and “requiring more of the work be done up front.”

“Too many programs we’re inventing as we’re buying, and that is a source of a lot of the cost overruns and the delays,” Thornberry said. Instead, the reforms would create a distinction between technology development and the procurement of established technology, “so you’re not inventing on the fly,” he said.

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