According on EM budget close, but shutdown talk precedes Congress’ return

By the numbers, House and Senate appropriators are within 2% of agreeing on a budget for nuclear-weapons cleanup for fiscal year 2025, but election-year politics could stand in the way of a resolution when Congress returns to Washington next week.

Overall for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management (EM), the House Appropriations Committee approved about $8.28 billion, roughly $139 million less than the Senate Appropriations Committee’s recommendation of just under $8.42 billion.

But instead of getting to that and other funding debates right away, Congress could spend what remains of the final month of fiscal year 2024 debating the length of a stopgap spending bill that would freeze 2024 spending through November’s presidential election. 

Moreover, media reported that House Republicans in August’s final week signaled, following support of the strategy from former President and current presidential candidate Donald Trump, that they will not pass even their preferred six-month continuing resolution unless it comes with strict voting ID requirements.

Republicans debuted the strategy during a private call with members of their conference, Politico and The Hill reported this week. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, told The Hill she wants a three-month continuing resolution.

Meanwhile, where EM is concerned, one of the biggest funding debates left for 2025, in terms of sheer dollars, is whether the final bill should include a little more than the House proposed for the Hanford Site in Washington state. 

Senate Appropriations Chair Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) wants to go about $27 million higher than the House, to roughly $1 billion for cleanup of the former plutonium production complex in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. 

The Senate Appropriations Committee approved its DOE funding bill in the final week of July, a week after the House’s version of the bill was abandoned on the floor after the right flank of the chamber’s Republican majority mutinied and refused to vote for several appropriations bills. House Democrats had signaled they would oppose these bills as a bloc.