The House Armed Services Committee (HASC) held a marathon hearing this week to mark up the Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), legislation that authorizes spending and sets policies relating to national security. After more than 12 hours of deliberations and votes on amendments, the committee voted to send the NDAA as amended to the House floor in a vote of 57-1. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) cast the lone vote in opposition.

The bill adheres to the $895 billion spending cap for national security agreed to last year. To stick to that topline, spending proposals, which would have required counterbalancing cuts, were relatively limited. Instead, some lawmakers focused on accountability in federal spending, while others worked to limit it.

Nuclear Weapons

Several good amendments relating to nuclear weapons were passed en bloc, meaning they were passed in a single vote on a group of amendments generally viewed as non-controversial.

In an en bloc package of amendments to the Subcommittee for Strategic Forces mark, Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA) secured support for several amendments requiring reports to Congress, which will enhance congressional oversight over Pentagon spending in crucial ways.

One requires a report on the impact of a new nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile, which Congress funded in FY24 over Navy objections related to its exorbitant cost and schedule delays.

Two other amendments authored by Rep. Garamendi focus on the Sentinel ICBM and its critical breach of the Nunn-McCurdy Act, a law requiring the Pentagon to reevaluate programs that experience significant or critical cost overruns. One requires a report on the Sentinel’s Nunn-McCurdy process to assess whether the Pentagon adhered to Nunn-McCurdy requirements and considered a range of alternatives. The other requires an update on possible alternatives for consideration in the report on the Sentinel program, which includes extending the Minuteman III and fielding a mixed fleet of Sentinel and Minuteman III ICBMs. These amendments come at a critical time as Air Force leadership has treated the Nunn-McCurdy process as more of a box-checking exercise than a serious review, stating that the Sentinel will be built and painting the results of the Nunn-McCurdy process as a foregone conclusion.

Similarly, another amendment by Rep. Garamendi that passed en bloc requires a report with recommendations and options for establishing a Nunn-McCurdy-type process for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), given significant cost growth across its nuclear weapons programs.

A stand-alone amendment offered by Rep. Garamendi that would have paused funding for the Sentinel until the Nunn-McCurdy review and program restructuring were completed failed in a vote of 9-49. Another amendment striking the requirement for the U.S. to maintain at least 400 deployed nuclear-armed ICBMs failed 13-45.

F-35

Rep. Garamendi also secured support for an amendment requiring a report on the impacts of commercially owned intellectual property for the F-35 in the Tactical and Land Forces en bloc amendment package. The Government Accountability Office (GAO), the nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, has repeatedly cited the Pentagon’s lack of access to proprietary technology on the F-35 as a driver of schedule delays, cost growth, and poor mission-capable rates.

Another amendment offered by Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) allows the Secretary of Defense to seize intellectual property related to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program to the extent the Secretary deems such seizure necessary for national security. As GAO reported, Lockheed Martin’s retention of proprietary data related to the F-35 has led to significant maintenance and sustainment issues, as government workers do not have access to the information necessary to perform much of the maintenance on the F-35. The amendment was ultimately withdrawn for procedural reasons.

Acquisition

In the Seapower en bloc amendment package, Rep. Joe Courtney (D-CT) secured support for an amendment requiring 100 percent design completion and a congressional certification prior to the start of construction on the first ship of a shipbuilding program. That could be a huge cost saver for taxpayers as so many Pentagon programs that were concurrently developed and produced, like the F-35, have faced significant problems because of it.

Climate Change Denialism

In a vote of 30-27, the committee adopted an amendment offered by Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-TN) that undermines the Pentagon’s ability to account for climate risk in its acquisition policies. Specifically, the amendment prohibits the use of funds authorized by the NDAA to finalize or implement a rule proposed by the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Council that would require the largest federal contractors to disclose emissions, set emissions reduction targets, and report on climate-related financial risks.

Speaking in opposition to the amendment, Representatives Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) and John Garamendi (D-CA) both highlighted that the proposed rule has yet to be finalized and that blocking its implementation ignores the national security and economic threats of climate change. Ranking Member Adam Smith (D-WA) argued that the amendment amounts to burying our heads in the sand by ignoring those risks. Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA) made the case that the proposed rule would enhance operational efficiency and readiness while reducing long-term costs associated with climate change.

As many have speculated that Congress is unlikely to finalize the NDAA prior to the election, the administration still has time to finalize this rule and should do so as soon as possible. If the NDAA retains this provision after going through the conferencing process, it would obviously impact the Pentagon’s ability to implement the rule, but getting the rule on the books is still worthwhile.

Unfunded Priority Lists

In a vote of 11-46, the committee rejected an amendment offered by Rep. Garamendi mirroring language in the Streamline Pentagon Budgeting Act that repeals the congressional requirement for the so-called unfunded priority lists (UPLs). UPLs are extrabudgetary wish lists for things the Pentagon couldn’t find room for in its $850 billion budget request, so to call them priorities is rather misleading. More importantly, they tend to fuel wasteful and unnecessary spending at the expense of real priorities in the budget.

As Rep. Garamendi explained in his introduction of the amendment, UPLs create “a process in which the appropriate prioritization that takes place within the Department of Defense and the administration is circumvented by multiple agencies within the Department of Defense.”

HASC Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL) spoke in opposition to the amendment, incorrectly stating that it would prohibit Congress from receiving UPLs. That is not the case. The amendment would still allow military service branch leaders and combatant commanders to submit UPLs and simply remove the requirement for them. This would be a return to the pre-2017 status quo when military leaders submitted the lists at their discretion.

Ranking Member Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) spoke in support of the amendment, arguing that the UPL process “hurts our ability to set priorities and make smart choices.” He underscored that the committee has plenty of opportunities to hear from the combatant commanders without UPLs but stopped short of correcting the Chairman’s false claim that the amendment would prohibit UPLs.

Stepping Back

While the committee strengthened congressional oversight of Pentagon spending through several amendments adopted en bloc, overall, the committee’s markup was disappointing from a taxpayer perspective. Thankfully, the Senate Armed Services Committee still has an opportunity to weigh in on when it takes up the NDAA in June. We hope they take the task of protecting taxpayer interests more seriously than many of their colleagues in the House.