E&W approps chair is for three-month stopgap budget to open fiscal ‘25

ARLINGTON, VA — Congress should pass a three-month continuing resolution to keep the government open when fiscal year 2025 begins, the Republican chair of the House appropriations subcommittee that writes the Department of Energy’s budget bill said here Tuesday.

“We need to keep the federal government open,” Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.) said here at the annual National Cleanup Workshop, an industry gathering for contractors of DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM). It is “never good policy to shut the federal government down.”

After Democrats and moderate Republicans last week helped sink a planned six-month continuing resolution coupled with stricter voter ID rules, Fleischmann and others have come out in favor of a three-month spending plan to keep the government open before the beginning of the new fiscal year on Oct. 1.

On Monday, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), the Senate majority leader, said he prefers a three-month continuing resolution that sticks to the spending caps he and Speaker of the House Rep. Michael Johnson (R-La.) agreed to earlier this year.

Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), the House majority leader and second-highest ranking Republican in the chamber, said this week the House could vote on a budget bill some time after Wednesday.

Under any continuing resolution, DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration would get less than requested for 2025 while EM and the agency’s Office of Nuclear Energy would get a little more than requested.