The Defense Department’s fiscal 2019 budget is a step closer to President Donald Trump’s desk, after the Senate on Tuesday voted 93-7 in favor of an appropriations bill that funds the Pentagon for the full year and keeps most other federal agencies going at 2018 spending levels through Dec. 7.
The Department of Energy is not among those other agencies. The civilian nuclear-stockpile steward was funded for all of 2019 under a separate multi-agency appropriations bill Trump signed Friday.
The House must still approve the multiagency appropriations act that funds DOD, along with the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education departments, and averts a partial government shutdown for all other agencies. The lower chamber’s Rules Committee is scheduled to meet Tuesday, when lawmakers return to Washington, to set the terms of debate for the bill. That could clear the way for a vote later in the week. The 2018 fiscal year ends Sept. 30.
On Thursday, Trump took to Twitter to complain that the “ridiculous” spending bill that contains the DOD’s 2019 appropriation did not include funding for one of his central campaign promises: a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico. Nonetheless, Trump had not at deadline Friday declared whether he will sign or veto the legislation.
Congress’ proposed Pentagon appropriation, at about $675 billion, is roughly $2 billion less than what the White House requested for fiscal 2019. However, the final bill would provide some $20 billion more for DOD than the 2018 budget.
Among other things, H.R. 6157 would boost military procurement by about $135 billion in 2019: roughly 1 percent more than the 2018 budget and nearly $5 billion more than requested.
The bill, would also, if signed, nearly double year-over-year spending for development of the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) to the House-recommended level of nearly $415 million: 20 percent more than what the administration requested. The new missile will replace legacy Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles, which were made by Boeing and are mostly armed with W78 nuclear warheads.
The Long-Range Standoff weapon, a next-generation nuclear cruise missile that like GBSD is in a competitive development phase, would get about $665 million for fiscal 2019: about 50 percent more than in 2018 and some 8 percent more than requested. The missile would be tipped by W80 nuclear warheads.
The Defense Department wants to field both missiles beginning in the late 2020s.
The Department of Energy’s W80 warhead life-extension program got a roughly 65 percent budget boost in fiscal 2019, to about $255 million, under the Energy budget bill Trump signed Friday.
Overall, the budget bill with the Energy appropriation boosted the DOE budget to roughly $35 billion: about a $1-billion raise compared with 2018 and some $5.5 billion more than the White House requested.
Within the total 2019 Energy Department appropriation is $15 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration: nearly 4 percent more than the 2018 appropriation and about 1 percent more than requested. Of that, $11 billion is for direct work on U.S. nuclear weapons, with the rest primarily funding nonproliferation and naval reactor operations.
