The Great American Outdoors Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I come to the floor to talk about the NDAA, but before I do, I want to join my colleagues and share their great enthusiasm tonight out here on the Senate floor in talking about the Senate-crafted bill, the Great American Outdoors Act, that took a step closer to getting to the President's desk today. That is the investment that we believe we should be making in open space and public lands passed the House of Representatives and we hope will be signed by the President very shortly.

This investment, as my colleagues were talking about tonight, has been a long time in coming on two fronts--obviously, coming from a State that represents a lot of National Parks and areas that need the investment in deferred maintenance projects--everything from Olympic National Park that will get an upgrade for some aging water systems to new trails at Mt. Rainier, to other projects at Lake Roosevelt and even Fort Vancouver.

I want to thank all my colleagues, Senators Gardner, Manchin, Portman, King, Burr, Warner, Alexander, Daines, and Heinrich, who made up the coalition who have been working on this issue in the more recent days to make sure that we got it out of the Senate and got it over to the House of Representatives. The important thing is that it has been a bipartisan coalition of people who believe in public lands and open space that has brought us to this point.

The Land and Water Conservation Fund was something that Scoop Jackson led the charge on in the 1960s, based on the fact that he thought America was urbanizing and, with our highway system, he thought we would need open space and, boy, was he right. So everything from Gas Works Park in downtown Seattle that gives families a great view of Lake Union to the impressive things that have been done all over the State, being able to say now that the Land and Water Conservation Fund will receive $900 million permanently means two to three times more money than we previously had to make investments in open space.

And we know that investments in open space are not only restorative to all of us who enjoy the outdoors, whether it is hunting or fishing or hiking, but it also is a big juggernaut for our economy. That over $800 billion in revenue is generated from this industry, and it is an industry that is well worth putting more investment in.

So I thank all my colleagues that were here tonight and for their hard work. Particularly, I want to thank Senator Manchin. Senator Manchin has done an incredible job taking this issue as the ranking member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and understanding how important it was to get it over the goal line.

So I tell the Senator that I am going to give him a picture of myself hiking in the Dolly Sods in West Virginia as a great thank you for his perseverance of moving this effort to the final goal line. So I just want to thank Senator Manchin and, obviously, all my colleagues. S. 4049

But, Mr. President, I wanted to come as we were wrapping up the final debate on the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2021 to talk to my colleagues about this bill as it moves to conference.

I want to make sure we continue to pay particular attention to one provision, and that is that the NDAA bill, as reported out of the Armed Services Committee, I believe included some egregious provisions that would effectively wrestle away civilian control of spending on our nuclear arsenal and give it to the military, a provision that would allow the Department of Defense to raid dollars out of the Department of Energy that are literally there specifically for us to meet our nuclear cleanup obligations and also to fund R&D at our national laboratories, places like the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado or other facilities in my State, like the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

Specifically, the committee-reported bill would have stripped the Energy Secretary's power over his own budget and would have allowed subcabinet officials on the Nuclear Weapons Council to approve the budget for the National Nuclear Security Administration.

So I know the Presiding Officer knows this well. But it would have allowed the Pentagon to prioritize making nuclear weapons over the critical missions of the U.S. Department of Energy. And I believe it also would have reduced civilian control over spending on our country's nuclear weapons complex.

I am so glad that Energy Secretary Brouillette wrote to Senator Inhofe and talked about this and said: ``These provisions eliminate a President's Cabinet Secretary from managing some of the most sensitive national security programs in the Department, most notably, assuring the viability of the Nation's nuclear deterrent.''

I do want to thank Senators Inhofe and Reed for hearing the concerns expressed by many Senators on both sides of the aisle and for hearing the concerns of the Secretary of Energy and accepting the Manchin- Cantwell amendment that stripped these troubling provisions out of the bill because I believe it was a radical change that did not have enough debate.

But I certainly appreciate the Presiding Officer's interest and determination as well. In particular, I want to thank Senator Alexander and Senators Heinrich, Cassidy, Wyden, Barrasso, Hirono, Risch, and Sanders who jointly sent a letter to the Senate leadership expressing opposition to these provisions.

Dear Majority Leader McConnell, Minority Leader Schumer, Chairman Inhofe, and Ranking Member Reed: As the Senate considers the Fiscal Year 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), we write to express our opposition to the inclusion of controversial and far reaching provisions that would fundamentally alter the Department of Energy's (DOE) responsibilities for the nuclear weapons budget.

As members of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, we write in support of Secretary Brouillette's June 29, 2020 letter to Chairman Inhofe and share his concerns that provisions in the Senate NDAA bill undermine DOE's ability to meet its mission goals and responsibility for maintaining the viability of the nation's nuclear deterrent.

As currently written, the Senate NDAA bill would strip the Secretary of Energy of the ability to manage some of the most sensitive national security programs that account for almost half of the Department's budget. Such changes could impede accountability and Congressional oversight, as well as imperil future funding for other critical DOE responsibilities such as promoting scientific and technological innovation, managing our National Laboratories, sponsoring basic research in the physical sciences, and ensuring cleanup of the nation's nuclear weapons complex.

Sweeping changes impacting civilian control of our nation's nuclear weapons programs should only be made in consultation and coordination with the committee of jurisdiction in an open and transparent manner. The changes included in the Senate NDAA bill have been met with opposition from the Trump Administration, former Secretaries of Energy, recent NNSA Administrators, and the Congressional Advisory Panel on the Governance of the Nuclear Security Enterprise.

We therefore request that the provisions be removed from the pending bill or that the Senate be allowed to vote on the relevant amendments filed by Ranking Member Manchin. Sincerely, Senator Maria Cantwell, Senator Lamar Alexander, Senator Martin Heinrich, Senator Bill Cassidy, Senator Ron Wyden, Senator John Barrasso, Senator Mazie K. Hirono, Senator Jim Risch, Senator Bernie Sanders.

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Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I respectfully ask that the members of this year's NDAA conference committee--I am assuming there will be one--that they consider all these issues as they go to conference.

This is not just a bureaucratic budget dispute or some interagency accounting measure. This is, I believe, a very important issue, as it relates to civilian oversight of our nuclear weapons complex and, as written in the original bill, would have required the Nuclear Weapons Council to set the priorities for the NNSA budget and would have required the Department of Energy to get the Nuclear Weapons Council's approval before it could submit its Energy budget to OMB.

So, yes, there was a big takeover of the Department of Energy budget snuck into the NDAA. Well, let's just say some of us knew about it; some of us didn't know about it. But we objected, and now, we have taken this language out.

But I am sure this will continue, and I think it still continues. I think people who have a desire to have a larger National Nuclear Security Administration budget definitely are going to continue this effort. But people should know that the National Nuclear Security Administration makes up about 45 percent of the Department of Energy's budget.

So, in other words, the Secretary of Energy would have lost control over almost half of his budget. And it would also mean that the Nuclear Weapons Council, which is comprised of five DOD subcabinet officials and one representative of the Department of Energy, that they would have effectively been dictating to members of the President's Cabinet what the budget should look like. So imagine that the Secretary of Energy has to come before Congress, and he says, 45 percent of my budget has already been determined by somebody else, and you really can't go talk to them.

This isn't just an issue of transparency. This is also an issue about the Department of Energy's obligations to clean up, specifically in Washington at Hanford. So I want to make sure people understand that nuclear waste cleanup is a Federal obligation. It is an obligation that we have as a nation, not just in Washington, but other States, and unfortunately, we haven't met all the milestones for nuclear waste cleanup. In fact, Idaho experienced this between 2012 and 2018 when DOE failed to meet cleanup milestones at the Idaho National Laboratory.

Taking away DOE's ability to control its own budget would make it harder to meet milestones, and now, some want more of their budget taken away by the NNSA. How are they going to meet these milestones? This is probably nowhere more important than in the State of Washington. And so the Department of Energy is legally obligated to meet these cleanup obligations at the Hanford site and to meet the obligations of what is called the Tri-Party Agreement, which is a legal contract with the State of Washington.

It is the duty of our Nation to clean up what was a national effort in World War II and the Cold War.

So I hope our colleagues won't forget history here, won't forget the obligation to clean up those nuclear waste sites, and certainly won't forget this effort we had here on the Senate floor. Last year, the Department of Energy completed a Lifecycle Scope, Schedule, and Cost Report for the completion of the Hanford cleanup site. It found remaining cleanup costs to be $323 billion at a best-case scenario and $677 billion at a worst-case scenario.

So that makes cleaning up legacy military nuclear waste sites in central Washington the second largest long-term obligation the Federal Government has after Social Security and Medicare. So it is no wonder people come and try to raid it.

Trust me, I could be going on all night over all the efforts that have been going on for decades, where people try to come up with a new way of either taking that money out of the budget or saying that they are going to find a quicker way to do cleanup. I am all for speed, but I am also for meeting the obligations. But there is no magic here. It is a responsibility, and it is science, and it is an investment, and it belongs to the whole Nation. And we certainly don't deserve to have people coming to the Senate floor with a bill trying to take away 45 percent of the administration's budget and then say we don't have to meet that cleanup obligation because we are investing in nuclear weapons instead.

So, believe me, as this bill moves off the Senate floor, I am going to be watching the conference. I am not just going to watch this issue now or in conference. I am going to be keeping watch on this issue in a constant fashion, just like I always have on Hanford cleanup dollars. But I resent that people believe that Congress would fall for such a tactic to believe that the efforts of nuclear weapons development should be controlled by a small subcabinet council and that they shouldn't report to the Secretary of Energy on that budget, but make up their own budget and demand that it be met at the Presidential level

Now, I just hope we don't reach this same dilemma again. I hope we have learned from it. I hope that people understand that these priorities of cleanup of our nuclear waste sites and what these parts of the country did for us in meeting our obligations in World War II and the Cold War.

We laud those efforts from a scientific perspective. We laud those efforts from the manpower that it took. We should now laud a budget that keeps the focus on cleanup and gets the job done and not lose track or sight because, from time to time, somebody else wants to make a larger investment in nuclear weapons.

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