The top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) said Tuesday the final, conferenced version of the fiscal year defense authorization likely won’t be completed until after the Nov. 3 election.
Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), the outgoing HASC ranking member, noted the conference committee will need to particularly work on settling differences between the House and Senate’s version of the $740.5 billion defense policy bill on the renaming of bases named after Confederate leaders and details of a new Pacific Deterrence Initiative.
“There are further negotiations that have to occur. And part of that negotiation is talking with the White House about the shape of [the base renaming] provision. Is there a way to get everybody to ‘good’? Of course there is. Is it likely to happen before the election? No, it’s not,” Thornberry said during a discussion at the Defense News virtual conference.
While both versions of the 2021 NDAA passed with provisions for renaming bases, President Donald Trump has threatened to veto the bill if the provision is included in the final version.
Thornberry said lawmakers will also have to work through differences in the new Pacific Deterrence Initiative, with the Senate proposing a $6 billion plan to boost deterrence against China in the region and the House offering a $3.6 billion pathway.
“I think this is a very important provision, and the most important part is that you do see a version of it in the House and a version in the Senate. [Defense] Secretary Esper says he supports a version of it now. He was reluctant for a while. So we’ll work out the details,” Thornberry said.
The NDAA conference delay has been expected with only a handful of working days left on the legislative calendar before lawmakers break for an October recess, while Thornberry said he expects quick progress when Congress returns following the election.
The House and Senate passed their respective versions of the bill in July. Both would authorize $20 million for the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the amount requested by the agency for the budget year beginning Oct. 1.
House appropriations legislation passed in July, though, would give the NNSA only about $18 billion – still a significant step up from the current spending approval of over $16.5 billion. The Senate had yet to issue appropriations bills for any federal agency, at deadline. A stopgap continuing resolution is pretty much a lock at this point, freezing most federal spending at current-year levels until a final 2021 budget can be passed.
The House NDAA would prohibit nuclear tests and put the secretary of energy on the joint DOE-Pentagon Nuclear Weapons Council: the advisory group for nuclear-weapon procurement. The Senate NDAA authorizes $10 million to prepare to perform a yield-producing nuclear-weapons test, and would require the secretary of energy to tell the White House whether the Pentagon approves of the NNSA budget that the DOE submits to the Office of Management and Budget each year, ahead of the public budget drop.
This story first appeared in Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor affiliate publication Defense Daily.
