As expected, federal programs including nuclear-stockpile and nonproliferation work managed by the National Nuclear Security Administration would continue running at 2017 budget levels until Jan. 19, under a stopgap budget bill expected to be signed Friday.
Congress passed the so-called continuing resolution late Thursday. At deadline Friday for Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor, President Donald Trump was expected to sign the measure: the third stopgap spending bill of the 2018 fiscal year that began on Oct. 1.
The bill again denies the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) a roughly $1-billion annual budget increase. The Trump administration proposed the increase in May. The House and Senate produced appropriations bills that would have granted most of the increase, but Congress has yet to actually pass a permanent 2018 budget.
So the NNSA will keep its roughly $13-billion-a-year budget for at least another month, by which time the agency will have been in a financial holding pattern for more than a fiscal quarter. None of the congressional continuing resolutions included special permission for the NNSA to exceed prior-year spending levels on crucial weapons programs, as a continuing resolution that kept the government open for several months in fiscal 2017 did.
So, the NNSA’s Weapons Activities account will remain at about $9.2 billion a year at an annualized level, rather than the roughly $10 billion the White House requested. The House about matched the administration’s request for a roughly 10.75-percent Weapons Activities raise, while Senate appropriators recommended a roughly 8-percent hike from 2017 levels.
Weapons programs slated for raises they once again will not receive include life-extension and modernization of existing nuclear armaments such as the W80-4 warhead and B61-12 gravity bomb.
Likewise, the continuing resolution again delays plans to accelerate construction and modernization of the plutonium pit-production facility at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, and increase funding for subcritical plutonium experiments at the Nevada National Security Site essential to maintaining the potency of existing warheads.
One the other hand, the NNSA’s nonproliferation budget will temporarily stay a little higher than the White House planned this year. The arms-control part of the agency’s portfolio will continue at an annualized level of about $1.9 billion, instead of the roughly $1.8 billion the White House requested for this fiscal year, under the new stopgap bill.
The House wants to cut the NNSA’s nonproliferation budget even more than requested: by about 5-and-a-half percent to roughly $1.77 billion. Senate appropriators proposed a roughly 2-percent cut to almost $1.84 billion.
The latest continuing resolution also means the NNSA will hold off on transferring some excess nuclear facilities to DOE’s Environmental Management office for final cleanup. The White House sought $225 million for that purpose in 2018, but the House and the Senate were prepared only to give $75 million and $55 million, respectively.
Meanwhile, the continuing resolution lets the NNSA continue building the Mixed Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility at DOE’s Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C. The new stopgap budget keeps the facility funded at the annualized equivalent of roughly $335 million. The Trump administration, like the Barack Obama administration before it, wants to cancel the facility, which is designed to turn surplus weapon-grade plutonium into commercial reactor fuel as part of an arms-control pact finalized with Russia in 2010.
