The House Appropriations Committee this week unveiled a peculiar budget bill that would provide full-year fiscal 2018 appropriations for the Pentagon, but keep other federal agencies including the Department of Energy funded at prior-year levels through Jan. 19.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.) introduced the bill Wednesday. The Department of Energy (DOE), like the rest of the federal government, is still funded at fiscal 2017 levels under a stopgap continuing resolution that expires Dec. 22.
The latest short-term funding plan would protect both military and civilian budgets from automatic across-the-board spending cuts that would otherwise begin in January because federal spending is above the level prescribed by the 2011 Budget Control Act.
While the House can pass the new continuing resolution on a party-line vote, the bill will need some Democrat votes in the Senate. Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill said this month they want to fund both domestic and military programs in any new budget bill.
Under this week’s continuing resolution, DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration, manager of U.S. nuclear warhead programs, would again go without the roughly $1-billion raise the Donald Trump administration requested in May for fiscal year 2018.
DOE’s Office of Environmental Management would likewise continue cleanup of legacy nuclear weapon sites at 2017 spending levels: $6.4 billion, in this office’s case. That is not much less than the $6.5 billion the administration asked.
Meanwhile, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), regulator of civilian nuclear power and waste, would have its budget frozen just above the requested level and receive the annualized equivalent of a little over $1 billion.
Also under the latest continuing resolution, neither DOE nor NRC would receive the funding the White House requested to resume licensing Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev., as a permanent nuclear-waste repository. The White House sought $120 million for DOE and $30 million for the NRC to resume licensing operations halted under the Obama administration.
Yucca has bigger problems in Congress than a continuing resolution, however. Republicans in the Senate have shown no appetite for funding any Yucca programs and provided no money for the mountain in a 2018 DOE budget the Senate Appropriations Committee approved in July.
The federal government’s fiscal year begins Oct. 1.
