The U.S. Department of Energy and other agencies would remain funded at prior-year levels almost through the end of December, under a second stopgap spending plan announced this week to keep the federal government operating while Congress tries to finalize its fiscal 2020 budget.
Meanwhile, the top Democrat and Republican members of the House and Senate Armed Services committees plan to meet next week to try, once again, to finalize the fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
Media reported this week that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Pelosi’s regular point of contact for budget negotiations in the Donald Trump administration, met Thursday with the senior Republican and Democrat members of the House and Senate Appropriations committees.
After the meeting, House Appropriations Committee Chair Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) told the Washington Post and other news organizations that Congress would issue another continuing resolution to keep the government open until Dec. 20. President Donald Trump will still have to sign the bill, which Congress had not written at deadline Friday. Politico reported Friday that Congress is gearing up to pass the bill ahead of the Thursday deadline to keep the federal government operating.
Fiscal year began Oct. 1 with the government funded at 2019 levels under a continuing resolution passed Sept. 27. The House had passed almost all of its annual appropriations bills by the end of the 2019 fiscal year, but the Senate got bogged down about whether to spend Pentagon funds on Trump’s proposed southern border wall and passed no appropriations bills.
The kick of the can did little to get things moving in the Senate, which has passed only one funding bill since fiscal 2020 began. Still waiting on a floor vote in the upper chamber is a package of appropriations measures covering the Pentagon, Energy Department, and other agencies.
The House in June approved $37.1 billion for the Department of Energy in fiscal 2020, $1.4 billion above prior-year funding and $5.6 billion more than the White House requested. It signed off on a $130 million appropriation for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, down just $95,000 from fiscal 2019 at the agency that collects 90% of its funding in licensee fees.
The energy and water bill passed by the Senate Appropriations Committee in September recommended just over $39 billion for DOE, $7.5 billion more than requested. The NRC would get a $117 million appropriation.
None of the funding for either agency in either bill would go toward resuming licensing of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada. The Energy Department and NRC together had requested about $150 to resume the proceeding, defunded nearly a decade ago by the Obama administration. Assuming Congress does not change its mind in the final budget, this will be the third time it has rejected the Trump administration’s requests for licensing funding.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.) told reporters the lower chamber would not agree to the so-called “skinny” fiscal 2020 NDAA proposed by his Senate counterpart, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.). Earlier this week, the Senate unanimously agreed to suspend consideration of Inhofe’s bill, which would have authorized only a few of the defense-nuclear programs covered by a full NDAA.
The full NDAAs produced by the House and Senate also did not authorize the $26 million the administration wanted for defense nuclear waste disposal – which would have been used for Yucca licensing. The repository would hold both high-level waste from defense nuclear operations and spent fuel from commercial nuclear power plants.
Vivienne Machi, reporter for RadWaste Monitor affiliate publication Defense Daily, contributed to this report from Washington.
