President Donald Trump on Thursday signed another stopgap spending bill that will keep the federal government running nearly three months into the 2020 budget year.
Major news organizations reported the president signed the agreement after the Senate earlier in the day voted 74-20 to pass a House amendment that extends the current continuing resolution to Dec. 20. Without approval, the continuing resolution would have expired on Thursday.
All the votes against the Senate measure came from Republican senators.
The bill would keep funding constant at fiscal 2019 levels, while allowing for a handful of exemptions including a 3.1% pay raise for the military. The House passed its amendment to H.R. 3055 by a vote of 231-192, with 12 Republicans voting to support the bill and 10 Democrats in opposition.
Fiscal 2020 began on Oct. 1 with the House having passed 10 of 12 of its appropriations bills for the year and the Senate passing none. The Senate has since then approved one piece of spending legislation, but has yet to act on a package that would cover the Departments of Energy and Defense, among other agencies.
Two sources on Capitol Hill confirmed that outstanding fiscal 2020 spending bills remain caught up in a battle between the White House and congressional Democrats regarding Trump’s desired U.S.-Mexico border wall. The White House has requested $8.6 billion in new funding for the wall and to backfill $3.6 billion in military construction funds that have already been taken for border barrier construction.
The Energy Department’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration remains funded at an annualized $15.2 billion under the continuing resolution, or about 8.5% less than the $16.5 billion the White House sought for fiscal 2020. The energy and water bill passed by the House in June would provide $16 billion for the semiautonomous Department of Energy nuclear-weapon agency, while Senate appropriators signed off on $17 billion in legislation still waiting on a floor vote.
The continuing resolution would keep NNSA nuclear weapons spending at $11 billion, rather than the 10% increase to about $12.5 billion sought by the administration for 2020.
Meanwhile, House and Senate conferees continue to negotiate the final version of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2020. The policy bill authorizes spending levels for Energy Department defense nuclear programs, with the actual money coming from separate appropriations legislation.
“The National Defense Authorization Act is so important because it takes care of our troops,” Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) tweeted on Wednesday. “That’s why it has passed for 58 years in a row, and that’s why I’m going to make sure that it passes again.”
However, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said the chambers remain at odds over the border wall and Trump administration plans to establish a Space Force within the Air Force, Politico reported.
“There’s substantial opposition within my caucus to both of those two things, and we’re having a hard time trying to get around that,” according to the HASC chairman.
The Senate’s 2020 NDAA authorizes $16.5 billion in spending by the National Nuclear Security Administration, while the House version backs only about $15.8 billion.
In its appropriations and NDAA, the House provided only roughly two-thirds of the funding the NNSA requested for fiscal 2020 to build out its infrastructure for production of plutonium pits, the fissile cores for nuclear weapons. That would be about $470 million, compared with some $710 million requested. The Senate NDAA authorizes the full request, and the Senate’s appropriations bill would give the NNSA’s pit-funding Plutonium Sustainment account even more than requested: $720 million or so.
But the continuing resolution leaves Plutonium Sustainment with just 45% of the funding the NNSA sought for fiscal 2020: roughly $360 million. The pits the NNSA would initially be used in W87-1-style warheads, which are slated for use aboard the next generation of intercontinental ballsitic missiles, the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent.
ExchangeMonitor affiliate publication Defense Daily contributed to this article.
