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 2016 spending legislation that would extend 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 Sept. 27 vote to curtail debate on the amendment, 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.
Should the stopgap bill become law, it would fund the DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration at an annualized rate of about $12.5 billion. The agency is seeking $12.9 billion for fiscal 2017, an amount both chambers of Congress supported in their respective energy budget bills.
While the total funding for some NNSA sites – namely the Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia national laboratories – change little under the new budget request, other sites are set to receive significantly more in fiscal 2017. This suggests that a freeze in funding at enacted levels could impact certain projects across the nuclear enterprise until a final budget is approved, although no NNSA-related anomalies – federal agency needs that would be unfunded in a continuing resolution – were submitted to Congress.
Some examples: the Kansas City National Security Campus would receive $744.9 million in the NNSA’s proposed fiscal 2017 budget, up from the currently enacted $615.6 million; the Nevada National Security Site’s budget would spike from $376 million to $396 million; and the spending level for the Pantex Plant in Texas would go from $661.4 million to $707.7 million.
The NNSA also requested an additional $442.8 million in fiscal 2017 for infrastructure and operations, to $2.7 billion, to address deferred maintenance (currently at a $3.7 billion backlog), upgrade aging infrastructure, and dispose of the Kansas City Bannister Federal Complex, which is being transferred to NNSA ownership for redevelopment.
The NNSA also requested $69 million for nuclear weapons dismantlement and disposition, up from the current $52 million – largely to meet the administration’s goal of accelerating dismantlement of all weapons retired before fiscal 2009 by the end of fiscal 2021, one year earlier than initially planned.
Meanwhile, a House and Senate conference committee is still working to finalize the fiscal 2017 National Defense Authorization Act, which authorizes funding levels for the NNSA. Final action is expected during the lame-duck session after the Nov. 8 election.
The House NDAA would authorize $13.3 billion for the agency, including $9.6 billion for weapons activities and $1.9 billion for defense nuclear nonproliferation. The Senate legislation would authorize $12.9 billion, including $9.2 billion for weapons activities and $1.9 billion for defense nuclear nonproliferation.
