Democrats and Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee want the president to get more hands-on practice with nuclear command and control, according to a provision in the chamber’s annual defense policy bill.
According to aides on the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, the lower chamber’s version of the fiscal 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) will require the president, at least once in every four-year term, to participate in a nuclear command-and-control exercise — essentially, a rehearsal of a nuclear-war scenario.
The requirement had bipartisan support, a subcommittee aide told reporters Friday in a briefing about the House’s version of the annual policy bill that sets one-year spending caps for defense programs at the Pentagon and the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).
Aides did not say how much funding the Democrat-led committee favors for either the NNSA or DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, which has its defense environmental cleanup budget authorized annually in the NDAA. Those figures were not in the strategic forces subcommittee mark released Sunday. Staff said they would not be unveiled until next Monday, June 29, right before the full House Armed Services Committee marks up the complete NDAA.
Subcommittees will mark up their components of the House NDAA starting this week. The strategic forces subcommittee is scheduled to hold its markup, which is typically brief and does not involve amendments, at 1 p.m. today.
The Senate Armed Services Committee marked up its version of the NDAA earlier in June. That $740-billion bill would authorize the roughly $20 billion in funding the NNSA sought for 2021, which would be about a 20% year-over-year increase. The Office of Environmental Management would get $5.1 billion under that bill for defense environmental cleanup, down from the $5.6 billion appropriated for 2020.
The full Senate was supposed to take up the NDAA before July 4, but GOP leadership decided last week to first debate a Republican-authored police reform bill.
