Alissa Tabirian
NS&D Monitor
10/9/2015
The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal 2016 passed the Senate this week in a 70-27 vote, moving the bill – identical to the version passed by the House of Representatives last week – to the desk of President Barack Obama, who has said he will veto it. The NDAA authorizes Obama’s total $611.9 billion request for defense discretionary spending, which includes $12.5 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).
The bill grants “an additional $50 million” to address the $3.6 billion deferred maintenance backlog of NNSA’s “old, crumbling infrastructure,” according to the summary of the conference report version of the bill. It also calls for the NNSA to create a team of senior officials tasked with developing “an implementation plan to reform the governance and management of the nuclear security enterprise” and directs the secretary of energy to create a “stockpile responsiveness program” to enhance the design and development of nuclear weapons by ensuring technical knowledge transfer “from one generation of nuclear weapon designers and engineers to the following generation.” The bill further urges “research and development of military responses to Russia’s violation of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty,” according to the report summary.
Obama has said he will veto the bill over the use of Overseas Contingency Operations funding to avoid caps on the base budget, prompting House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) to release a statement this week noting that the bill fulfills the president’s request. “$612 billion, that’s what the President asked for and that’s what this bill provides,” Thornberry said. “There is no difference between the two."
