The leader of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) plans to introduce a stripped-down version of the fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) next week as a last-ditch effort to push colleagues to reach consensus on a number of partisan issues while the conference bill flounders.
“This is sincere, but this is only in the event that we don’t pass a bill,” committee Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) told two reporters, including Defense Daily, Wednesday on Capitol Hill. He plans to introduce it in anticipation of other matters – such as the ongoing impeachment proceedings in the House – sucking out oxygen on Capitol Hill.
“Who knows? They may decide to do impeachment, and we’ll be stuck on the floor for two weeks and run out of time and then our [military doesn’t] even get paid,” he said. The plan is to introduce the bill Oct. 29.
The crucial funding authorities center around military pay, but must-have provisions in the skinny NDAA that relate to procurement and operations and maintenance include long-lead efficiencies for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, forward maintenance for the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship fleet, operations and maintenance for cyber capabilities and DoD travel support for federal officials, according to a Senate Armed Services Committee flash card viewed by Defense Daily.
A source close to the committee said other authorizations could make it into the skinny NDAA as well, but it is not clear yet what they would involve.
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.) on Thursday said he would prefer that Congress pass a full NDAA.
“I still believe that we’re going to get the bill [NDAA] done, that we’re not going to go with this smaller bill,” Smith said during a Ploughshares Fund event in Washington, D.C.
If NDAA conferees do not reach agreement on a full authorization bill and the skinny NDAA is passed instead, it is unlikely the authorizing committees would revisit the outstanding authorizations this budget cycle. Lawmakers are already “well into” planning for fiscal 2021 budget cycle, Inhofe said.
Still, he expressed optimism that the conferees will achieve their goal of agreeing upon a full bipartisan bill for fiscal 2020, which began Oct. 1. Sources on Capitol Hill have said the sticking points remain largely on extremely partisan issues, such as funding the U.S.-Mexico border wall.
“We’re at probably 80 percent of being able to pass a bill,” Inhofe said. “Hopefully this will be motivation for them to get to the other areas like the border.”
The NDAA sets spending limits and policy for defense programs, including the Department of Energy’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). The House’s full bill would authorize $15.8 billion in fiscal 2020 for the agency, more than $600 million under the NNSA’s nearly $16.5 billion funding request. The Senate bill would authorize $29 million more than the NNSA asked for, at just over $16.5 billion.
Authorizers in both chambers approved a roughly $5.6 billion cap in their full NDAAs for defense environmental cleanup, the largest tranche of funding for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management. They also both authorized nothing for defense nuclear waste disposal, against the administration’s request for $26 million to help resume licensing for a radioactive waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev.
The slow roll on the NDAA mirrors Congress’ unfinished business in appropriations for fiscal 2020. The House in June passed all but two of its appropriations packages, including a multi-agency “minibus” covering the Energy Department, NNSA, and Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Senate Appropriations Committee in September advanced its own raft of spending measures, including an energy and water development bill. However, the full chamber has yet to pass any of them. Instead, Congress passed a stopgap continuing resolution that keeps the government open through Nov. 21.
The Senate is scheduled on Monday to take up a minibus covering agencies including the Departments of Justice, Interior, Agriculture, and Housing and Urban Development. A separate bill encompassing the Pentagon and Energy Department is expected to follow.
The energy and water bills in both the House and Senate zero out the administration’s Yucca Mountain licensing funding request, which would total roughly $150 million at the Energy Department and Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Work on DOE’s 2008 license application to the NRC has been frozen for the better part of a decade, defunded by the Obama administration. Congress already rejected Trump administration requests for fiscal 2018 and 2019 for money to restart the licensing program.
The original version of this article was published in RadWaste Monitor affiliate publication Defense Daily.
