President Joe Biden signed on Friday compromise stopgap budget bill to avert a government shutdown and keep Department of Energy nuclear weapons and waste budgets at 2021 levels past Valentine’s Day and preserve a funding safety valve for uranium-enrichment cleanup.
The Senate voted 69-to-28 Thursday evening to approve the continuing budget resolution to keep the federal government open through Feb. 18, according to Roll Call and other national news outlets.
Earlier that day, the House of Representatives passed in a 221 to 212 vote, H.R. 6119, the Further Extending Government Funding Act to keep the government open.
The agreement on the budget deal was announced Thursday morning by senior appropriators in the House and Senate.
Under the bill, the DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy, which handles civilian nuclear waste matters, including the agency’s recently rebooted consent-based siting program, would remain at around $1.5 billion. That’s a little less than what unreconciled spending bills passed this summer by the full House and Senate Appropriations Committee would provide.
