Amid fiery and furious fact-checking and blame-chucking in the general press over the credit President Donald Trump appeared to take for modernizing the U.S. nuclear deterrent, the National Nuclear Security Administration recently observed the 22nd anniversary of the White House prohibition on explosive nuclear-weapons testing.
The steward of the national nuclear deterrent marked the milestone in an Aug. 11 note posted to its Facebook page.
As the post went up, fiscal 2018 budget prospects for the computer-driven NNSA stockpile stewardship program precipitated by the end of explosive testing remained uncertain — even though appropriations bills pending in Congress show the White House and lawmakers agree the program should eventually get a raise.
As part of the big boost it wants to give NNSA weapons programs, the Trump administration requested about $735 million in 2018 for Advanced Simulation and Computing programs: one of the linchpins of the non-explosive testing performed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California; the Los Alamos and Sandia national laboratories in New Mexico; and Rochester University in New York.
The Senate Appropriations Committee approved that increase — more than 10 percent higher than the 2017 appropriation — as part of an energy and water bill it voted to the floor before Congress’ August recess. The House, on the other hand, approved about $710 million for Advanced Simulation and Computing as part of an appropriations package approved in that chamber in late July. The lower chamber’s total is roughly 3.5 percent less than the White House request, but still about 7 percent more than the 2017 appropriation.
The current appropriation, though, could still figure big into the NNSA’s immediate future. For one thing, after lawmakers return from break, they will have less than a month to hammer out a budget compromise acceptable to both the House, the Senate, and the White House. If they cannot, they would have little choice but to extend the 2017 budget via a stopgap spending bill known as a continuing appropriation. Not only do such stopgap measures freeze spending levels and prevent budget boosts, they also forbid agencies from starting work on new programs.
Meanwhile, the House appropriations package sent to the Senate exceeds the federal budget caps set in place by the Budget Control Act of 2011. That means even if both chambers accept it and the president signs it into law, it would trigger automatic across-the-board cuts known as sequestration for discretionary defense and civilian spending. In that case, the NNSA would be among the agencies to get a haircut.
Congress is due back in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 5.
