The U.S. Senate passed the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on Tuesday, as the House approved appropriations bills for the federal fiscal year: legislation that, together, would provide year-over-year raises for almost all Department of Energy nuclear cleanup and weapons programs.
The NDAA passed on a no-doubt margin of 86-8, with four Democrats and four Republicans voting in opposition. Four Democrats and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) who are running for president did not vote, nor did the retiring Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.). President Donald Trump has said he will sign the NDAA. He had not, at deadline, said whether he would sign the appropriations bills.
The House passed the two appropriations bills written to fund the government through Sept. 30 by a vote of 280-138. The measures are packages of defense- and non-defense funding, with DOE money nested in the non-defense package.
Assuming the Senate passes the appropriations bills and President Donald Trump signs them, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) would receive some $16.7 billion for nuclear weapons and nonproliferation programs: more than a 9.5% raise from 2019’s $15.2 billion and just above the 2020 request of $16.5 billion.
With a proposed budget of $7.5 billion, the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management would get a 4% raise from its 2019 budget of $7.2 billion. The 2020 appropriation would be 15% higher than the requested 2020 budget of roughly $6.5 billion. Both the House and Senate rejected the White House’s plan to increase the NNSA budget by decreasing Environmental Management spending, instead approving larger-than-request budgets for both programs.
Further entrenching a losing streak that reaches back to the Barack Obama administration, the bills would authorize no funding for the proposed dual-use, civil-military permanent nuclear-waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev. The final appropriations bill even omitted funding for proposed interim storage sites for civilian nuclear waste: a stunner, after both the House and Senate expressed support for such way-stations.
The federal government is currently funded by a short-term continuing resolution that expires Friday, nearl three months after the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1. The Senate must pass, and Trump must sign, at least the NDAA and the non-defense appropriations package before then to keep the biggest DOE nuclear-waste and weapons programs going after this work week.
