House lawmakers on Wednesday approved a fiscal 2018 energy and water budget that would give the the Department of Energy about $30 billion, including new cleanup work for the agency’s Office of Environmental Management.
The House Appropriations Committee voted by a voice vote, with a few Democrat dissenters, to send the nearly $38 billion 2018 Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill to the House floor for a vote that had not been scheduled at deadline Wednesday for Weapons Complex Morning Briefing.
One source said House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee Chairman MIke Simpson (R-Idaho), along with the heads of several other Appropriations subcommittees, want to create a so-called “minibus” measure by attaching their spending bills to the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs spending bill for 2018. That legislation, approved by the House Appropriations Committee on June 15, was completed with far more urgency than the bill that includes DOE’s 2018 budget.
DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) would get about $6.4 billion under the committee’s bill: less than a 1-percent cut from the 2017 level, but 2 percent less than the Trump administration request. The bill would give EM $75 million to carry out three new cleanup projects, including two at active National Nuclear Security Administration facilities. The administration asked for $225 million so EM could start cleaning up an unspecified number of disused NNSA sites in 2018.
The spending bill would provide the Department of Energy with $120 million for licensing of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in fiscal 2018. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission would receive another $30 million for its side of the licensing reivew.
Within the bill’s total, the NRC would receive about $955 million for 2018, including $15 million in carryover funding from 2017. That is nearly a 5.5-percent increase from the 2017 appropriation, and — excluding the carryover — in line with the administration’s request.
The Senate, bogged down in partisan gridlock over health-care legislation and executive branch appointments, has not yet unveiled its proposed DOE or NRC budget for 2018.
