The Donald Trump administration plans to pay for a larger civilian nuclear weapons budget in fiscal 2021 by requesting funding for only a single Virginia-class attack submarine next year, rather than a pair, Bloomberg News reported Thursday.
The outlet is the first to confirm rumors that circulated in Washington in January that President Donald Trump’s decision to back a $20 billion 2021 budget for the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) would crimp the Navy’s fleet-expansion program.
The requested NNSA budget would be more than $2 billion above the appropriation of $16.7 billion for the current 2020 fiscal year that began on Oct. 1.
The Navy’s submarine program winds up the primary bill payer for that proposed increase, ponying up $1.6 billion for the NNSA request, Bloomberg reported. Other defense programs would provide the remaining $1 billion or so that the White House has allowed the NNSA to seek from Congress.
According to one source with knowledge of the NNSA’s unilateral press for a bigger budget, NNSA Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty was adamant the agency should not have to move funds from any of its non-weapons programs to bolster the weapons programs.
In January, the newsoutlet The Dispatch was first to report that Gordon-Hagerty and Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette were at loggerheads over the NNSA’s 2021 budget request. Trump reportedly sided with the agency boss following an Oval Office meeting in which prominent defense hawks in Congress, including Senate Armed Services Chair James Inhofe (R-Okla.), threw their weight behind a larger NNSA budget.
