This week, almost halfway through the fiscal year that started Oct. 1, congressional appropriators announced they would pass a final 2024 budget for the Department of Energy and other agencies next week.
In the meantime, to avoid a partial government shutdown on Friday, when funding for DOE and other agencies was set to expire, Congress on Thursday passed yet another short-term continuing resolution that will largely hold federal agencies to their 2023 budgets.
On Thursday, the Senate approved the stopgap by a vote of Thursday 77-13 and the House by a vote of 320-99.
President Joe Biden (D) said Thursday he would sign the week-long spending bill.
Under the continuing resolution, which would be the fourth since fiscal year 2024 began, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) gets the annualized equivalent of roughly $22 billion for its nuclear weapons programs. That’s about $2 billion less than the full House and the Senate Appropriations Committee proposed in separate 2024 spending bills written last year.
In the previous continuing resolution, the NNSA got special permission to exceed 2023 spending levels at the Uranium Processing Facility at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn., which has fallen behind schedule and run over budget.
