The Department of Defense would get more control over the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons budget under the Senate version of the fiscal 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which was unveiled Tuesday.
The Senate Armed Services Committee filed the text of the bill, which sets funding limits and policy for defense programs, late in the evening. The panel approved the $740 billion legislation earlier this month, with the full Senate expected to take it up in July.
The measure authorizes the roughly $20 billion budget that National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty wanted for her agency, over the objections of her boss, Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette.
Gordon-Hagerty won the fight for a 20% year-over-year raise, after springing the larger-than-expected ask on Brouillette late in the 2021 budget cycle, backing up her request with a year-long study internal to the NNSA, and calling in like-minded lawmakers from Capitol Hill to make her case in the Oval Office about a month before the final budget drop. Those tactics prompted senators to sharpen existing laws about how the civilian nuclear weapons agency clears its budget request with the Pentagon and the broader DoE.
Under the Senate committee’s NDAA, the joint DoE-Pentagon Nuclear Weapons Council would vet the NNSA’s budget request before it goes to the White House Office of Management and Budget for final approval. If the council thinks the budget request is adequate, it must tell the secretary of energy so. If the council thinks the NNSA isn’t seeking enough money for any given weapons program, it can tell the secretary of energy that as well. The secretary would then be required to request that funding for NNSA.
The energy secretary would also be authorized to raise any concerns about the council’s directive with the Office of Management and Budget, and what NNSA budget he or she would prefer, according to the committee’s bill.
Also, as reported by media last week, the committee’s NDAA includes language from Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) that authorizes $10 million to speed up preparations for a nuclear explosive test, “if necessary.” Funding for test preparations would have to come out of the NNSA’s Stockpile Responsiveness Program, according to the legislative text.
Congress created the Stockpile Responsiveness Program in the 2016 NDAA so that the NNSA and the Pentagon would have a spending account dedicated to the study of emerging threats, technology challenges, and flight tests for weapons prototypes.
The Washington Post reported in May that the Trump administration discussed conducting a nuclear-explosive test, which the NNSA has eschewed for decades, as a means of convincing Russia and China to discuss a new trilateral nuclear arms control treaty.