GOP lawmakers behind National Nuclear Security Administration reform language in this year’s House version of the Fiscal Year 2013 Defense Authorization Act are chafing at pushback from Department of Energy officials, and a Congressional aide suggested yesterday that if DOE officials continued to oppose the reform efforts, lawmakers would go even further next year. “The House tried to take a measured step to reform the NNSA without making big organizational changes,” a Congressional aide told NW&M Monitor. “But, if those reasonable reforms are scuttled by the DOE bureaucracy this year, then the next step will likely be to begin to move NNSA out of DOE altogether.”
Such a drastic move would likely meet significant opposition, even among Republicans that have pushed NNSA reforms to increase the agency’s productivity, but it is reflective of the concerns that many lawmakers have with the agency, and Congressional aides suggested it could enjoy support among lawmakers frustrated by DOE opposition to reform. Currently, language in the defense authorization bill would eliminate oversight of the NNSA from DOE’s Office of Health, Safety and Security, force the DNFSB to consider cost as part of its recommendations, shift the NNSA to performance-based rather than transactional oversight, and streamline directives and orders governing work in the weapons complex. Opposition to the language has come from a variety of sources, including the DNFSB, labor unions and watchdog groups. Most significantly, the Obama Administration said it “strongly opposes” the language in a Statement of Administration Protocol last week.
However, Congressional aides have suggested that there is tension among senior leaders within DOE and they have asserted that Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a former laboratory director, is supportive of some of the reform provisions. On Tuesday, however, DOE HSS chief Glenn Podonsky spoke out against the elimination of HSS and the shift toward performance-based oversight. “Frankly, if Secretary Rumsfeld or Gates had staff in open warfare against them as Secretary Chu’s senior aides are today, those same aides would be manning a garbage scow to Diego Garcia inside of a week,” one Hill staffer said. DOE spokesperson Jen Stutsman, though, emphasized in a written response to NW&M Monitor yesterday that, “the Secretary supports strong safety standards at DOE facilities, and opposes the language in the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Secretary Chu helped craft the strong Statement of Administrative Policy released last week and he will work to remove these provisions from the legislation.”
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