The head of the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is deeply unhappy with a rumored budget request of roughly $17.5 billion for the upcoming 2021 fiscal year, a new digital publication reported Tuesday.
The figure would prevent the semiautonomous Energy Department branch from meeting the goals set out in the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, including annual production by 2030 of 80 fissile nuclear-weapon cores called plutonium pits, according to a story published Tuesday by The Dispatch, a website founded by conservative commentators Steve Hayes and Jonah Goldberg.
The article appeared less than a month before the scheduled Feb. 10 release of the Trump administration’s official budget request for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. The NNSA’s 2020 budget is more than $16.5 billion, almost a 10% increase from the 2019 appropriation. The rumored 2021 request of $17.5 billion would represent a 4.5% raise on top of that, and is 3.5% higher even than what the NNSA thought it would request only a year ago, according to the Future-Years Nuclear Security Program line in the agency’s 2020 budget request.
Still, according to The Dispatch, NNSA Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty sought a whopping $20 billion top line for the next fiscal year as part of what the publication reported as a “strategy-driven” budget.
The White House Office of Management and Budget rebuffed that idea, as part of the annual post-Thanksgiving haggling in Washington between federal agencies and the administration. The move prompted Gordon-Hagerty to fire off an 11-page memo asking that her boss, Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette, use his influence as a member of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet to fight for the $20 billion.
Broutillette, The Dispatch said, told Gordon-Hagerty to be content with a $17.5 billion request — something she evidently is not.
The funding levels proposed by the Office of Management and Budget “do not meet the commitments of the policies set forth in the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, 2017 National Security Strategy and Nuclear Weapons Council requirements,” Gordon-Hagerty reportedly wrote in the memo to Brouillette. “At this level of funding, NNSA will need to reduce the size and composition of the stockpile almost immediately.”
The move, Gordon-Hagerty said, picking up the language of some of Congress’ most fervent defense hawks, is “essentially unilateral disarmament by the United States of America.”
The NNSA did not respond to a query regarding the report by deadline Wednesday.
