The Senate adjourned Friday without passing an appropriations package that includes a little under $15 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), though a key Democratic senator signaled she would not oppose the bill over the low-yield nuclear warhead the measure funds.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), one of the longest-tenured senators still serving, said in a floor speech Tuesday she supported, “on balance,” the so-called minibus appropriations package that includes some $35 billion in proposed Department of Energy funding for 2019.
“Despite my opposition to funding for this nuclear warhead, I do recognize that, in other ways, this is a balanced bill,” Feinstein said Tuesday. “It is not the bill I would have written if I were chairman, but on balance, I support this bill. I urge my colleagues to do so as well.”
Feinstein — the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations energy and water subcommittee that drafted the DOE budget language now on the floor — made her speech only a day casting one of just 10 “no” votes on a 2019 National Defense Authorization Act that cleared the way for the NNSA to spend $65 million turning some existing warheads into new low-yield, submarine-launched ballistic-missile warheads.
The appropriations bill Feinstein says she will support includes $65 million for that same low-yield warhead program.
Overall, the spending bill before the Senate proposes about $14.8 billion for the NNSA: roughly even with the 2018 appropriation, about 2 percent less than the White House requested for 2019, and some 3.5 percent below what a House-passed minibus would provide.
Like the House bill, however, the bill the Senate is preparing to vote on would fully fund ongoing nuclear weapons modernization programs, including three life-extension programs and one major alteration.
Unlike the House bill, the Senate would recommend down the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility under construction at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C. The NNSA wants to turn the delayed, over-budget plutonium-disposal plant into a factory for fissile weapon cores called plutonium pits.
When the Senate left for the weekend, it left without acting on six NNSA-related amendments. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) made a procedural move Thursday to curtail debate, clearing the way for a vote on the bill at 5:30 p.m. Monday — only two hours after the Senate is slated to gavel in that day.
In no particular order, these amendments are:
- SA 3023. From Sens. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.): A proposal to entirely remove the $65 million proposed for the low-yield warhead and transfer the same amount into the agency’s defense nonproliferation account. The funding would be earmarked to develop a plan to help verify North Korea’s nuclear disarmament, should that ever happen.
- SA 2972. From Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.): The amendment would rope off half the $65 million the bill would provide for the low-yield warhead, pending a report to Congress about the need for the warhead, and its potential to escalate a conventional conflict into full-scale nuclear war.
- SA 2970. From Feinstein and Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I): To prevent the National Nuclear Security Administration from using 2019 minibus appropriations to begin engineering development of any low-yield nuclear warhead without authorization from Congress. If this and the 2019 Senate NDAA became law, the NNSA could theoretically begin engineering development of a new low-yield warhead in fiscal 2020 simply by requesting funding to do so that year.
- SA 2921. From Sens. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and Thomas Udall (D-N.M.): An amendment, couched in “Congress finds” language, that would require annual certification by the Nuclear Weapons Council, from April 2019 through 2025, that the Los Alamos National Laboratory is on track to produce 30 plutonium pits a year by 2026. In the annual certification, the council would also have to show its timetable for producing another 50 pits a year.
- SA 2998. Also from Heinrich and Udall: This amendment includes essentially the same language and reporting requirements as SA 2921, but is not presented as a congressional finding.
- SA 3035. From Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas): A proposal that would prevent any organizational change at the Department of Energy that would limit the secretary of energy’s authority over the NNSA, and to prevent the general counsel of the NNSA from becoming independent of the Department of Energy’s general counsel.
Senate passage of the minibus would clear the way for a conference committee with the House that could produce a unified spending package for President Donald Trump to sign. Combining bills into minibus packages in theory allows Congress to debate the legislation quicker, without entangling relatively noncontroversial spending with politically toxic proposals, as sometimes happen with the omnibus spending bills that fund the whole federal government with a single piece of legislation.
