As soon as Wednesday, only days before members leave for their summer recess, the House of Representatives could approve a compromise defense policy bill authorizing a new low-yield nuclear warhead, according to Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).
McCarthy firmed up the timeline for final House passage of the fiscal 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on Friday. His public schedule now says a vote on the final NDAA is “possible” by midweek.
The bill would authorize the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to start building the new low-yield, submarine-launched ballistic-missile warhead requested by the Donald Trump administration in February in the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review.
Minority Democrats on the Hill have opposed the new weapon, sometimes bitterly, but to no avail. Both the House and Senate 2019 NDAA would authorize $65 million for the warhead. Both chambers’ 2019 Department of Energy appropriations bills, which now await final bicameral conference negotiations, followed through with $65 million in funding for the warhead.
Among other differences, the final NDAA bill would resolve:
- Whether to outright bar the NNSA from canceling the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., as the Senate proposed. The House bill, as last year’s NDAA did, gives the agency a chance to cancel the plant and possibly convert it into a production facility for nuclear warhead triggers called plutonium pits.
- Whether to give the NNSA a greater degree of independence from the secretary of energy, as at least one Senate Republican is concerned the upper chamber’s 2019 NDAA would do.
- Whether to require, as the Senate wants, the Government Accountability Office to investigate how much money the NNSA has saved by combining the management and operations contracts for the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, and the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn. The sites are, respectively, the agency’s nuclear-weapons assembly-and-disassembly plant, and its uranium processing hub.
Meanwhile, the House and Senate still have not scheduled final negotiations on the bill that contains the 2019 DOE budget. If those bicameral talks do not conclude this week, they will wait until after Labor Day, when the House returns from August recess.
The Senate will be away for the first week of August, then return to resume work on other appropriations bills and judicial nominees.
