Congress adjourned for the week without passing a short-term continuing resolution to keep the government funded at 2016 levels until Dec. 9, leaving lawmakers only another week to put finishing touches on the bill or risk another government shutdown.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) began the week with hopes that the upper chamber by now would have advanced a shell bill that could be modified to host a 2016 spending bill that would have extended the 2016 federal top line for another two months.
The shell bill passed the necessary procedural hurdles in the Senate this week, but the amendment that would add actual spending provisions to the measure got hung up on partisan politics that have nothing to do with the Energy Department’s nuclear programs. Chiefly, Senate Democrats objected that their Republican counterparts added no emergency funding to clean up lead-contaminated drinking water in Flint, Mich.
However, McConnell has scheduled a vote to curtail debate on the amendment Sept. 27, which would leave enough time to jam the bill through the Senate and then the House, and then rush it to President Barack Obama for a signature to avert a government shutdown after midnight, Sept. 30. The next budget year begins on Oct. 1.
DOE would be funded at an annualized level of about $29.5 billion, if the short-term spending bill becomes law. That would put a squeeze on some agency programs for which the White House had requested an increase, though only for two months, and only then if Congress does not use the authority it has to shift funds around within the total 2016 appropriation to programs that urgently need it from programs that can do without.
The department received $22.5 million for its Integrated Waste Management System (IWMS) in 2016. IWMS is DOE’s effort in transporting, storing, and disposing of American spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste, which includes the Obama administration’s consent-based siting process. The department requesgted $76.3 million for IWMS in 2017, which includes $39.4 million in new funding for consent-based siting. DOE officials have said a continuing resolution would directly impact the program.
Under the continuing resolution, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would receive annualized funding of just over $1 billion, which is about 2 percent more than its 2017 request.
