Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
10/2/2015
Congress this week passed a continuing resolution that will fund the federal government through Dec. 11 at fiscal 2015 enacted levels and avoids a government shutdown. The CR gives Congress an additional 10 weeks to work toward a budget solution, but with uncertainty in the House following Speaker John Boehner’s recent resignation announcement, there remains no guarantee lawmakers will make any additional progress come December. Appropriations leaders, though, hope to avoid the need for any additional CRs or shutdown threats. “Once again, Congress has had to act on a short-term funding bill to keep the lights on in government,” House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) said in a statement. “This yearly, destabilizing practice is bad for the U.S. economy, bad for the reliability of important government programs – including our national defense – and wastes federal money by arbitrarily postponing actions that make better use of taxpayer dollars. However, this legislation is absolutely necessary, as the alternative – a government shutdown – is reckless and irresponsible.”
The CR did not include any anomalies related to DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy. The fiscal 2015 appropriations bill funded the Department of Energy at $27.8 billion, of which $914 million went to the Office of Nuclear Energy. The bill also provided $71.5 million for used nuclear fuel disposition.
