The House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday approved about $425 million in funding above the president’s request for nuclear-weapons infrastructure in fiscal year 2022 — money that corresponding appropriations bills would not yet allow the National Nuclear Security Administration to spend.
The authorized funding came from an amendment to the committee’s 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) proposed by Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Al.), the ranking Republican on the committee. The amendment, easily adopted on a 41-17 vote, would boost allowable defense spending about $25 billion above President Joe Biden’s request. As part of that, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) overall would be authorized to spend more than $20 billion in fiscal year 2022, up from some $19.7 billion requested.
Also during Wednesday’s marathon NDAA markup, which ran until 2:30 a.m. on Thursday, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) succeeded in amending the bill to prohibit the U.S. from deploying fewer than 400 intercontinental ballistic missiles but failed to amend the bill to add more than $50 million in requested funding to extend the life of the B83 megaton-class nuclear gravity bomb.
The full House and Senate had yet to schedule floor votes on their respective versions of the 2022 NDAA at deadline. In July, the Senate Armed Services Committee approved its own version of the 2022 NDAA, which also would authorize $25 billion more defense dollars than requested. Once approved by the full House and Senate, the two bills will have to be reconciled in a bicameral conference committee.
Rogers’ amendment in the House Armed Services Committee would, if signed into law, authorize the NNSA to spend an extra $76 million above the request on construction of the Uranium Processing Facility at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., and an extra $350 million about the request on infrastructure and operations: an account that pays for maintenance and repairs across the NNSA complex.
Fourteen Democrats joined the House Armed Services Committee’s Republicans to approve the Rogers amendment.
The wrinkle in this bipartisan vote for more defense spending, at least for the NNSA, is that the full House and the Senate Appropriations Committee have already approved appropriations bills that do not include Rogers’ extra funding for NNSA infrastructure, including Y-12’s next-generation factory for producing nuclear-weapon secondary stages.
