The Department of Energy and other federal agencies could get a full fiscal 2018 budget as soon as late March, if a budget compromise Senate leaders announced Wednesday becomes law. That would be nearly six full months after the current budget year began on Oct. 1, 2017.
On Wednesday morning, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced a budget compromise that would eliminate automatic federal spending cuts due to phase in over the next two years and extend fiscal 2017 budget levels for federal agencies until March 23, with an aim of passing a permanent 2018 budget after that. The current stopgap budget bill expires after midnight Thursday.
If the Senate’s compromise becomes law, DOE nuclear programs and the independent Nuclear Regulatory Commission would for another six weeks be funded at the annualized equivalent of their 2017 budgets: roughly $13 billion instead of $14 billion as requested for DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration; about $6.4 billion for the department’s Environmental Management office instead of the $6.5 billion requested; and about $1 billion for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, instead of the roughly $950 million requested.
The Senate had not published the text of its proposed budget fix at deadline Wednesday for Weapons Complex Morning Briefing.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Wednesday stopped short of guaranteeing President Donald Trump would sign the bill.
“We applaud the steps forward that they’ve made but we’re going to need to see what’s in the final bill,” Sanders told the White House press corps. “But we’re certainly happy with the direction it’s moving.”
The pending budget deal would allow Congress to increase spending on domestic programs and the military by eliminating the dreaded “sequestration” cuts passed into law as part of the 2011 Budget Control Act. The accord also promises Senate Democrats a chance to legislate, outside the confines of an appropriations bill, legal protections for young people brought into the country illegally.
The federal government shut down for a weekend and a day in early January after Senate Democrats refused to vote for a stopgap spending bill that did not include such protections for young immigrants, who are known informally as the Dreamers.
