The Senate will hold its next votes on Nov. 14, leadership announced Thursday, meaning the upper chamber won’t consider its version of the fiscal year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act until after the midterm elections.
However, debate will begin on the annual, must-pass defense-policy bill on on Oct. 11, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said last week.
Against the Joe Biden administration’s wishes, both version of the NDAA would allow the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to continue its work on the sea-launched variant of the W80-4 nuclear cruise missile warhead. However, only the Senate version authorizes the continued maintenance of the B83 megaton-capable gravity bomb the administration wanted to can.
The bills also authorize spending far more than the administration asked on the agency’s proposed plutonium pit plants at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and the Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C. The White House proposed spending far more on the Los Alamos plant, which has to be ready to produce multiple nuclear warhead cores beginning in 2024, than on the Savannah River plant, which NNSA has said will not be up and running until at least the early- to mid-2030s.
SASC advanced its $847 billion version of the NDAA out of committee in mid-June after adopting a $45 billion topline increase during its closed-door markup of the bill. The House in mid-July voted 329 to 101 to pass its nearly $840 billion version of the NDAA.
The chambers will have to iron out the differences between their separate bills in a bicameral conference committee after the Senate’s scheduled vote in November.
“While we have accomplished a great deal so far, more than any Congress in recent memory and we all should be proud of what we accomplished, we still have much to do and many important bills to consider” Schumer said on the Senate floor on Thursday, the day Senators passed a temporary budget bill to begin fiscal year 2023. “Proceeding to the NDAA will save us valuable time, enabling us to get more done. But members should be prepared for an extremely, underline extremely, busy agenda in the last two months of this Congress.”
