Energy Secretary Rick Perry will testify before the House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee next week on his agency’s fiscal 2020 budget request.
Perry is the only witness scheduled to appear before the panel at 10 a.m. Eastern time Tuesday at Rayburn House Office Building Room 2362-B in Washington, D.C. The subcommittee is led by Chairman Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) and Ranking Member Mike Simpson (R-Idaho).
The Energy Department has requested $31.7 billion in total for the budget year beginning Oct. 1, well under the current $35.5 billion appropriation.
Of that, nearly $6.5 billion is planned for the Office of Environmental Management – a roughly $700 million decrease from this year’s $7.2 billion congressional appropriation for nuclear cleanup. The Energy Department also wants $116 million for its Yucca Mountain and Interim Storage Program; Congress last year gave it nothing.
The department’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is seeking $16.5 billion for 2020, an increase of over 8 percent from its 2019 appropriation of more than $15 billion.
Perry and NNSA Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty are scheduled to testify next Thursday before the Senate Armed Services Committee. The hearing, beginning at 9:30 a.m. in Dirksen Senate Office Building room SD-G50, will address “the Department of Energy’s atomic energy defense programs in review of the Defense Authorization Request for Fiscal Year 2020 and the Future Years Defense Program.”
