Still deadlocked over whether to spend the maximum allowed by a law passed this spring, Congress on Friday still had not passed a bill to keep federal agencies open in the new government fiscal year that begins Sunday.
On Friday, even before it failed by a 198-232 vote to pass in the chamber in which it was written, President Joe Biden (D) said he would veto a stopgap budget, or continuing resolution, proposed by House Republicans on Thursday. House GOP members wrote the bill after deciding not to vote on a bipartisan continuing resolution passed by the Senate on Tuesday. The Senate bill would have kept the government open until Nov. 17, the House bill until Oct. 31.
Department of Energy defense nuclear programs would be slightly underfunded, relative to the White House’s 2024 request, if either bill became law. The National Nuclear Security Administration would be held to about $22 billion, missing out on a roughly $2-billion raise that House and Senate appropriators agreed on over the summer.
With the shutdown looming, the Department of Energy’s message to employees and contractors was clear: if appropriations run out, come to work anyway but cut out all travel for non-DOE events and visits.
“[A]ll DOE employees should continue to report to work according to your usual work schedule,” Deputy Secretary of Energy David Turk wrote Thursday in an email blast to all hands. “Similarly, contractors should continue to execute on contracts unless and until otherwise notified.”
However, the agency wrote in a follow-up email on Friday that if “there is a lapse in government funding and DOE is still in operational status, DOE federal employees may continue travel for internal purposes (site visits, inspections, to DOE facilities/locations etc.). Travel that is not for internal purposes or is to participate in public facing events should be deferred. Non-internal travel and public-facing events that an office believes cannot be deferred should be submitted to their Under Secretary for a case-by-case review.”
Topline spending is at the root of the impasse between the House and Senate, though House attempts to enforce conservative social policies in the appropriations bills that fund federal agencies plays a part, too.
Before they wrote their own continuing resolution this week, House Republicans this summer produced full spending bills that treated the caps in the Fiscal Responsibility Act as a ceiling for the federal budget in fiscal year 2024 and beyond.
Democrats who control the Senate produced spending bills that spend what the caps allow. Nuclear weapons programs at DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration are exempt from the cuts in the Fiscal Responsibility Act.
