Todd Jacobson
WC Monitor
5/9/2014
The House Appropriations Committee formally unveiled its subcommittee allocations for Fiscal Year 2015 this week, and lawmakers on the House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee will have a little less funding to work with this year. The committee set the Energy and Water allocation at $34.010 billion, $50 million less than a year ago, which could create challenges as appropriators divide money among the various agencies overseen by the subcommittee, including the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management. The allocations were governed by a $1.014 trillion ceiling on discretionary spending established as part of a budget deal in December.
The spending cap is divided into defense ($521.3 billion) and non-defense ($492.4 billion), but the committee did not reveal the defense/non-defense breakdown for the subcommittees this week. “We have tried to fairly spread these reductions accordingly, and no subcommittee has been increased by more than 2 percent or reduced by more than 3 percent,” House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) said this week. “I believe that these are fair and reasonable allocations, given the overall framework provided to the Committee by the budget agreement.”
DOE Seeking $5.6 Billion for EM
In its FY 2015 budget request, DOE is seeking a total of approximately $5.6 billion EM, representing a cut of approximately $200 million from the funding levels Congress enacted for FY 2014. The site that took the hardest funding hit in DOE’s request is Hanford, where the Department proposed $848 million for work overseen by the Richland Operations Office, a cut of almost $100 million from current funding levels. Most other major cleanup sites, though, would largely be kept at current levels.
The Senate Appropriations Committee hasn’t established its subcommittee allocations yet, and though it will be using the same $1.014 trillion top line, it can—and will—divide up the money differently, and the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee is expected to have more than the $34.01 billion provided to its House counterparts. “At least we’re all starting from the same top line,” another Congressional aide said. “Even though there are differences in priorities and funding levels for the agencies there is less room for maneuvering than if we were starting from different top line levels. In the past, we’ve been billions of dollars apart.”
