The Trump administration has taken issue with 3-year-old, bipartisan bill language the codifies the right of U.S. lawmakers to request sensitive information from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
The language, a standard rider on most budget bills since 2014, was introduced that year after then-Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) objected to the NRC’s revision of its Internal Commission Procedures to limit disclosure of sensitive material to the chairs and ranking members of congressional committees. Boxer claimed this unfairly prevented rank-and-file lawmakers from keeping watch over NRC activities in their home states and districts.
Eventually, lawmakers on both sides of Capitol Hill agreed with Boxer and required the NRC to reinstate an older version its internal rulebook that allowed any member of Congress to request sensitive information.
The directive was served in a single paragraph copied and pasted into spending bills for the past three years, including the fiscal 2017 omnibus Trump signed Friday: “The Nuclear Regulatory Commission shall comply with the July 5, 2011, version of Chapter VI of its Internal Commission Procedures when responding to Congressional requests for information,” the 2017 bill reads.
On Friday, after Trump signed the legislation, his administration released a statement complaining that the NRC directive, among others in the bill, curtails the president’s authority to control what his Executive Branch does or does not share with Congress.
“I will treat these provisions in a manner consistent with my constitutional authority to withhold information that could impair foreign relations, national security, the deliberative processes of the executive branch, or the performance of my constitutional duties,” Trump wrote in the May 5 statement.
Lawmakers first codified Chapter VI of the NRC’s Internal Commission Procedures in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2014. The Obama administration raised no objection to the language then in its statement about the 2014 spending bill, or in subsequent statements of administration policy about spending bills for the 2015 and 2016 fiscal years that also included the language.
Congress created NRC in 1974 as an independent regulatory commission whose five members enjoy some insulation from political winds. Commissioners are appointed by the president but must be confirmed by the Senate. They serve five-year terms and may only be fired by the president for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office,” according to the 1974 law that created NRC.
Only the chair of the NRC serves at the president’s pleasure. However, the chair must be selected from among the five Senate-confirmed commissioners and remains a commissioner even if he or she is removed as chairman by the president.
There are currently only three NRC commissioners. Two of the five seats on the commission are vacant, although that is enough to meet NRC’s statutory quorum. Chairman Kristine Svinicki’s term ends on June 30.
