WASHINGTON — The National Nuclear Security Administration would get more than its requested budget for 2025 but fewer funds for nuclear weapons, under a bill Senate appropriators passed unanimously on Thursday.
But with a companion spending bill stalled on the House floor and the Senate headed out of town until after Labor Day, a compromise on civilian nuclear-weapon spending still seemed far away to one of the bill’s authors.
“My prediction,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), ranking member of the Senate Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee, is that “we’re going to end up in September with a [continuing resolution] that continues the status quo until after the election.”
Under the committee’s 2025 energy and water development fiscal year 2025 appropriations bill, the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) would get about $25.2 billion overall, $200 million more than requested, more than $1 billion above 2024 but roughly $265 million less than the recommendation that was stranded last week on the House floor after some of the chamber’s Republican lawmakers opposed it.
However, Senate appropriators declined to go along with their House colleagues in approving higher-than-requested funding for new plutonium pit infrastructure, the Uranium Processing Facility, or Infrastructure and Operations, which is an agency-wide maintenance account, a detailed spending report released Thursday with the bill shows.
The Senate committee also prescribed a little extra scrutiny for a sea-launched nuclear cruise missile opposed by the Joe Bide administration but mandated by Congress.
Appropriators said they were “concerned” about a “lack of detail” about the $70-million NNSA requested for the sea-launched missile’s warhead, a W80 variant, according to the Senate committee’s bill report. Lawmakers told the agency to write a five-year spending plan for the warhead, to include which sites were working on it and how much funding they need, and to turn it over to the committee within 90 days of the underlying bill becoming law.
Overall, NNSA Weapons Activities would get a little under $20 billion under the Senate committee’s bill: about even with the request, $820 million or so more than the 2024 budget and some $400 million less than what House appropriators approved in July.
The 2025 fiscal year begins Oct. 1, and the House left Washington a week early for its own summer recess.
The Senate Appropriations Committee passed its bill 27-0 as one of four pieces of legislation Thursday morning. The markup of all four bills started at 9:30 a.m. and took under two hours. Kennedy said the committee’s proposed NNSA budget was “okay,” compared with the version languishing in the House.
Elsewhere in the NNSA, the Senate committee recommended $2.6 billion for defense nuclear nonproliferation: about $165 million more than the request, $49 million more than the 2024 budget, and $185 million more than what the House appropriators requested.
For naval reactors, the Senate committee would provide a little over $2 billion, about $41 million less than House appropriators recommended and the White House requested, and $131 million more than the 2024 appropriation.
Senate and House appropriators each would give the requested $564 million to the NNSA for federal salaries and expenses, making for a raise of about $64 above the 2024 appropriation.
Again bucking the House, Senate appropriators also declined to go above the request for the Uranium Processing Facility (UPF), the next-generation factor for nuclear-weapon secondary stages under construction at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
The Senate committee’s bill recommended the $800 million the White House sought for UPF, which is well behind schedule and over budget. That is $30 million less than the 2024 budget and $40 million less than recommended by the House Appropriations Committee’s energy and water development subcommittee, which is chaired by Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.), whose district borders Y-12.
