After hours of debate on more than 60 amendments this week, the House of Representatives canceled a planned vote on several 2025 appropriations bills, including the one that funds the Department of Energy and National Nuclear Security Administration.
Media reported Wednesday that a fractious, razor-thin Republican majority could not wrangle enough votes in their own party to pass the bills if all the Democrats in the chamber opposed the bills. The House now planned to begin its August recess early and not return to Washington until Sept. 9. The 2025 fiscal year ends Oct. 1.
There was no vote scheduled Thursday for the 2025 Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, H.R. 8997, according to the Republican cloakroom’s website. The Senate Appropriations Committee began sending appropriations bills to the upper chamber’s floor last week but had not as of Thursday passed an Energy and Water bill.
“When Congress reconvenes in September, it is time for Republicans to join Democrats to quickly adopt bipartisan spending bills,” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, wrote in a statement distributed to media Wednesday evening.
DOE’s 2025 budget bill hit the floor Tuesday and hours of floor debate on amendments followed. The House managed to pass a pair of amendments to shore up funds at the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, before abandoning the bill.
By a voice vote that was not challenged, the House approved an amendment by Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), whose district includes the Pantex Plant near Amarillo, Texas, that would prohibit the NNSA from using funds to halt construction of a high explosive facility in Pantex.
Meanwhile, Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.), who this month announced he was diagnosed with cancer, had two amendments on the floor to reduce what Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), speaking on Garamendi’s behalf, called “wasteful, unnecessary expenditures.”
One of these amendments would have prohibited funding toward the W87-1 air-launched cruise-missile warhead and another would have prohibited funding upgrades for plutonium pit production at the Savannah River Site. Both amendments failed by voice vote.
The Joe Biden (D) administration said Monday it would veto the House’s version of the Department of Energy’s 2025 budget, even though the President supports the bill’s funding of $25.5 billion for the NNSA.
