The Senate passed the National Defense Authorization Act on Wednesday, sending the defense policy bill to the White House.
The legislation passed the upper chamber in a 85-14 vote, paving the way for President Joe Biden to sign the bill into law. The House passed the legislation last week.
The policy bill authorized $895 billion for Fiscal Year 2025 and approved funding for the Navy to buy six battleforce ships, including one Virginia-class submarine, one San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock, one Medium Landing Ship, and three Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyers.
Report language accompanying the legislation notably accused the Navy of hiding information about submarine costs from lawmakers and the White House.
“We are concerned with the lack of transparency that has occurred between the Navy and Congress over the last 18 months,” reads the joint explanatory statement accompanying the bill.
“The Navy negotiated a funding strategy with industry that would have addressed cost growth, future cost to complete, workforce wage increases and infrastructure investments at both shipyards. The Navy did this in isolation and failed to not only inform Congress but also the Office of Management and Budget.”
The language is a reference to the Shipyard Accountability and Workforce Support plan, a Navy proposal also known as SAWS that could help the service deal with cost growth on two Fiscal Year 2024 Block V Virginia-class submarines and future multi-year submarine deals.
Using SAWS, the Navy could take money from submarines not yet under contract so shipbuilders HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding and General Dynamics Electric Boat could pay workers higher wages. The plan could create a funding pool for workers like crane operators and supervisors throughout the shipyard, while attaching the pay for pipe fitters and welders to specific hulls under construction.
Instead, the White House Office of Management and Budget proposed an injection of $5 to $6 billion in the form of an anomaly to keep the Virginia-class submarine program going.
Meanwhile, lawmakers on Tuesday unveiled a continuing resolution that would keep the government funded through March 14. That CR proposed an anomaly for the Virginia-class program instead of embracing the SAWS proposal.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said Congress included a lump sum of funding in the CR instead of the SAWS proposal because lawmakers didn’t have enough time to properly analyze the Navy’s plan.
“I think the challenge with SAWS … was that it was put on the table pretty late in the game to give the HASC and SASC members and then maybe more appropriately, the appropriators, the time to kick the tires and wrap their head around it,” Kaine told reporters. “I think the case was convincingly made that the anomaly was needed to keep us moving forward. But I think SAWs was not dismissed out of hand, but it was kind of maybe not ready for prime time yet.”
Kaine, who currently chairs the Senate Armed Services seapower subcommittee, said lawmakers were surprised that the Navy needed more money for submarines after receiving supplemental funding for the submarine industrial base earlier this year.
Congress and the Navy need to come up with a long-term solution that addresses submarine acquisition, maintenance, the industrial base and workforce challenges, the senator said.
“My goal is to really get this right and not just in a series of year-end anomalies,” Kaine said. “You know, year-end anomalies are certainly better than not having an anomaly. But they’re not the same thing as a predictable path forward that’s going to get us either to 2.33 on Virginia-class subs or speed up the pace of carrier or Columbia-class subs or other platforms.”
Under the proposed CR, about $5.6 billion would go toward the Virginia-class boats and paying the workforce for the Navy’s nuclear-powered ships, according to the text of the legislation. About $2 billion would cover the two Fiscal Year 2024 Virginia-class boats that are still not on contract, while $1.5 billion would go toward the FY 2025 Virginia boat, according to a breakdown reviewed by USNI News. The remaining money would go toward wage increases and infrastructure improvements.
The proposed CR also includes an anomaly for the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine program, to the tune of $6 billion in advanced procurement funding and another $3 billion in regular procurement.
The current CR keeps the government funded through Friday, Dec. 20. CRs restrict funding to the prior fiscal year’s levels and prevent the Defense Department from spending money on new-start programs.
The stopgap spending bill was withdrawn on Wednesday after House Republicans, President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance came out against the bill on social media.
