HOUSE ENERGY AND COMMERCE PANEL TO HOLD NNSA OVERSIGHT HEARING

The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, which has raised concerns about the relaxed oversight across the weapons complex and contractor assurance systems across the National Nuclear Security Administration, is holding a hearing on the topic at 9:30 a.m. Friday in Room 2123 of the Rayburn House Office Building. The subcommittee hasn’t announced what witnesses will testify at the hearing, which is titled “DOE’s Nuclear Weapons Complex: Challenges to Safety, Security, and Taxpayer Stewardship.” The subcommittee in the past has raised concerns about safety and security problems NNSA sites—specifically at Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories—and last month it requested that GAO study the NNSA’s governance model and evolving contractor assurance systems. In a letter to the NNSA, the lawmakers suggested that previous GAO reports have called into question the rationale behind an increasing reliance on contractor assurance systems and a shift away from strict oversight across the weapons complex, and questioned whether NNSA was ready to give its contractors more freedom. “These GAO findings call into question the basis for CAS implementation: that contractors conduct self-assessments that provide the objective performance information on which the government should rely to make performance determinations worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually,” the lawmakers wrote.