EXCLUSIVE: Reps. Fleischmann, Thornberry talk budget plans for defense, nuclear security

U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Tenn., who represents Oak Ridge, and Rep. Mac Thornberry,R-Texas, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, gave an exclusive interview to the Knoxville News Sentinel ahead of their visit to Oak Ridge last week.

The congressmen talked about plans for defense spending going forward, and how it will affect Oak Ridge and national security.

This interview has been trimmed for space and edited for clarity. Questions and answers are divided by subheads relevant to the topics discussed.

Question: So you were talking a little bit about your plans for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory tour. On the record, what can you tell us about it? 

Fleischmann: I’m very privileged to have Chairman Mac Thornberry, who chairs the Armed Services Committee in the House of Representatives, to come visit Oak Ridge. This is a city that I've represented in Congress. Chairman Thornberry is the key authorizer; I’m an appropriator, and I think this is very important. 

Our focus is going to be to visit Y-12, which is critically important to our national nuclear security. The chairman represents Pantex. (Pantex is a National Nuclear Security Administration plant in Texas. Y-12 and Pantex are run by the same managing contractor). 

We will visit the Uranium Processing Facility (UPF), and visit Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Then, of course, we will be looking at our cleanup mission, which covers much of the entire complex there.

Thornberry: Well, I'm looking forward to being back. It's been quite a few years since I've been to Y-12 (National Security Complex) and I've never had the opportunity really to get briefed and see Oak Ridge, so I’m looking forward to that as well.

I think in a larger sense, nuclear deterrence is fundamental to our nation's security, and yet for too long, we've let it slip. We've taken it for granted and now we've got a lot of catching up to do in facilities and equipment and so forth.

We’re starting that, but there are real needs out there, because as we watch what's happening around the world with the Russians, the Chinese and others — obviously, the North Koreans are much on our mind these days — having a strong, credible nuclear deterrent ourselves is absolutely essential for protecting the American people.

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Uranium Processing Facility

Q: So when you mention the UPF, do you mean the site of it or the office, or…

Fleischmann: Actually the physical site. As we know the Y-12 complex has done a tremendous job for years in dealing with the secondary components of our nuclear arsenal, and Pantex does the primary components. But it's an antiquated facility, and the Uranium process facility, the UPF, is actually under construction and it's going very well. We've done some work on the site, which the chairman will see.

I want many people to see that site, just as the chairman said, that's so critical for nuclear deterrence in this country, for which Oak Ridge plays a big part in that. 

Well, they just hit the 90 percent completion mark (required to begin construction) on the designs last month, right? So when did they start construction?

Fleischmann: They started construction work on the site about a year ago, where they did things like building roads …

Ok. So you mean like site prep? 

Fleischmann: Originally they were going to put everything under one roof and that design did not work. So it's actually a modular or campus approach, that’s the term that they’re using. So, you can actually have a building with less critical security needs, like a maintenance building, which they’re actually constructing right now, versus the ultimate complex which will do, hopefully, the microwave casting: the unique technology on the uranium that will require a very heavily secured facility.

So you have multiple buildings, but if you look at the site, every time I go there it gets better and better and they’re doing more and more work. 

Q: And I know one of the ways they kind of loweredthe amount of things that had to be in the UPF is that they’re using some of the older buildings on the site. There was a Government Accountability Office report recently that said Building 9215, which is going to remain in use for a while, can’t be brought up to safety code. How do you foresee this serving the uranium program? 

Fleischmann: Remember this is the site where we have buildings from the original Manhattan Project, and many of these buildings are old or antiquated and need to come down, and that actually falls on what we would call the environmental cleanup side.

We’ve got to tear down sites, and then ultimately we will be building on those sites. The downside of it is, many times we have to spend dollars to keep these sites up before we can tear them down. So we are talking with the Department of Energy on a very regular basis, for a plan to tear these buildings down. There are a lot of excess facilities that will be ultimately torn down, and in its place, we will be building new facilities. 

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Q: Well this particular facility, though, it is not scheduled to be torn down.

It’s one of the ones that is supposed to take on some of the uranium sustainment activities that won’t fit into the UPF. But they’re saying that it can’t possibly be brought up to safety code, even with the billion dollars that might get put into it. 

Fleischmann:  There are literally tens of buildings on that site, so that specific building, and that specific need, I would defer to (the managing contractor). 

Thornberry: I would just add, this is a problem throughout the complex. The reason I’ve said is that we’ve neglected it for too long, that in every site, we have old buildings, not all of which go back to the Manhattan Project, but many of them at least go back to the early days of the Cold War, and we just have not kept them updated, so the safety upgrades, as well as having a workplace where you can attract and retain top quality talent, is something that we've got to pay more attention to.

Fleischmann: I totally agree with the chairman, because if you look at the Y-12 building, they’ve had instances where chunks of concrete literally fall down. There are certain chemical reactions that have taken place, that have just eroded the original concrete, and this is what is so key to getting the $6.5 billion Uranium Processing Facility complex here.

It is critical to our nation’s nuclear arsenal. 

Federal Defense Budget

Q: OK. So if some compromise is reached between the House and the Senate budget requests, the National Nuclear Security Administration is going to see a 6 to 8 percent increase. I saw some projected numbers for NNSA funding recently of what the NNSA budget will look like in the future, and it looks like it’s going to keep going up.

The House specifically requested an 11 percent increase for weapons activities. Why is this such a priority right now? 

Thornberry: We've neglected it for too long and now we're playing catch-up. So, it takes several years of sustained increases, not only in facilities, which is what we have been talking about, but in manpower and equipment and in operations in order to get the job done.

These are aging machines. So, it's like you had a car built in the 1980s. You've got to make sure that it operates perfectly like you want it to, that when you turn the key, it'll fire right up, but you can't ever turn it to actually test it.

You still can change out parts, you’ve got to do the inspection, but, as time goes on, as there's corrosion, other things that's happened over the course of time, it's harder and harder and more expensive to do. 

Q: Both requests decrease the nonproliferation side of the budget, under NNSA. Why’s that? 

Thornberry: Well, a lot of the nonproliferation account has been our activities with the former Soviet Union. Obviously, we're in a different political place now with Russia, than we were at the end of the Cold War.

I think most everyone wants to have funds available, so that if there’s a need that arises in the nonproliferation field, that you've got money to do that. On the other hand, we have such needs with our own nuclear weapons conflicts, we cannot afford to have money in that account that funds science projects. We’ve got to take care of our own nuclear deterrent because our security rests on it. 

Q: When we look at the Energy request from both the House and the Senate, the House’s seems to more closely mimic the president’s request, especially on Defense spending increases and on cuts to ARPA-E and the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. 

Fleischmann: I’ll address this from an appropriator’s standpoint, and then I’ll let the chairman address it as chairman of the Armed Services Committee.

We have 12 subcommittees on the House Appropriations Committee. Defense is one of them.

It’s a dangerous world right now. So, the prioritization for funding Defense from an appropriation standpoint has been critically important. From that standpoint, I think you will have seen a larger allocation for Defense, and all of the other subcommittees have had to have a bit of a lesser allocation. 

Remember, we’re under the constraints of the Budget Control Act, so we have a single amount that’s going to be allocated. I think most people would agree that Defense needs to get a large share of that. 

Thornberry: Actually, I think the president's original budget request for that overall Defense spending was not enough. In July we passed an authorization bill and now we have passed appropriation bills that substantially increase Defense spending, including above what the president has asked for. The Senate has also passed an authorization bill — 89 to eight — at that higher level.

In his speech to the U.N., President Trump endorsed that higher level that the House has passed twice and the Senate once now: roughly $700 billion for next year. Today, (Thursday) just before we got on the plane, we voted for the budget, which is also at that higher level.

All of that is good news for people who believe that we have shortchanged Defense, and by Defense, I include the national security part of the Department of Energy. We are making progress in turning it around; we just have to get over the finish line.

I'm not as familiar with other parts of DOE’s budget. I do think that you saw such a tremendous increase in some of those funds in the early Obama years, and a lot of folks are saying, ‘How much does the federal government need to be involved in the commercial energy sector?’ 

So you have other things in DOE,  but as far as the national security part, NNSA, and I think basic science, is important, especially on the national security side, you’re going to see increases. 

Arms Race

Q: The NNSA’s budget has been on the uptick, and it’s projected to continue increasing. At what point does it hit the mark, or is it going to continue to increase indefinitely? 

Thornberry: As I said, these weapons are not going to stop aging. So, the challenge is, we get further and further away from the last nuclear test. And our adversaries are advancing their nuclear capability with new designs and new weapons, so the challenges are not going to slow down.

So maybe we make a drastic change. We go back to testing. We have a different design, you know something like that could change this trajectory. But as far as the challenges facing NNSA, they’re not going to lessen. 

We heard in some of the Senate subcommittee hearings before the Senate actually approved their version of the Energy appropriations bill, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) in particular, was concerned about Defense spending being prioritized over other areas like basic sciences or Environmental Management even, which is responsible for some of these excess facilities that we talked about. 

Fleischmann: We address this in a very strong, bipartisan fashion, and (Energy) Secretary (Rick) Perry and I have talked about this. There’s going to be robust funding for Environmental Management, but there’s so many cleanup sites. There are decades worth of work to be done, even in Oak Ridge, but all around the country.

I think we’ve realized that is a federal obligation and that will be addressed.

You refer to some of the accounts that had perhaps been lessened. You need to look at some of the key critical accounts that are being utilized. For example, supercomputing. Oak Ridge is one of the key sites for supercomputing research.

Right now, we are working on that. There will be obviously a science benefit to that, but there will also be a great national security benefit to that. Our adversaries, the Chinese, have become number one in the world. We used to be number one, now we’ve dropped to fourth. We’re working on a supercomputer now that will make us number one again. 

There’s an awful lot of things being done in the Office of Science that will have a benefit on the national defense side as well. It just comes down sometimes with limited allocations, where do you make those kinds of choices? 

Rest assured, the portfolio of the Oak Ridge National Lab for the future is very bright in materials research, in supercomputing, in a lot of the basic sciences. That is not going to become extinct.

But right now I think we are going to be focusing critically on the national security front because as the chairman said, these are things that we’ve been neglecting so long, and our adversaries are sadly moving ahead at a very rapid pace.

Thornberry: The broad national security budget, to include NNSA, from 2010 to 2014, that budget was cut 22 percent. There’s really not much else you can find in the federal budget that was cut 22 percent in that four-year period.

During that period, Russia invaded Crimea, ISIS came to exist, China started building new military bases in the South China Sea. Even today, we are spending 18 percent less on national defense than we were in 2010.

So, we are very much in a game of catch-up at a time when North Korea has missiles that can reach the United States. ISIS and al-Qaida have not gone away. Iran is advancing their missile capability. We have to play catch-up.

So what is the timeline at this point on getting the Energy budget passed?

Fleischmann: The House has passed all 12 appropriations bills, which is a tremendous accomplishment, and we did it in a very short period of time. Actually, we addressed fiscal year 2017 and 2018 as appropriations in the same year. When they said it couldn’t be done, we worked to midnight to get it done.

Now it’s up to sitting down with the Senate. It’s my understanding that we’ve actually started some conversations with the Senate and the Administration will weigh in and hopefully we will get something worked out. I think that we’re headed towards that. 

Thornberry: I hope so. It has to be done by Dec. 8th. That is when the current continuing resolution runs out. But I completely agree that Chuck and the appropriators have done a terrific job this year in the House in producing all of the bills. Now it’s time for the Senate to get serious and sit down and work out the final funding arrangements, and that will require some sort of change, control or adjustment to the Budget Control Act. 

Q: There are always concerns in a transition year over whether the budget is going to be late, whether it’s going to be more difficult to come to a consensus.

Thornberry: Well, the president’s budget request was late. We didn’t get it until May. We usually get it the first of February. Like you say, in every transition year it comes late. But even with a late budget coming in May, the appropriators got their job done in getting all of the appropriation bills out of the House, and so with the budget passage today (Thursday), we’ve done everything we can possibly do to move toward a resolution on the whole budget.