Todd Jacobson
NS&D Monitor
6/27/2014
House lawmakers are expected to take up the Fiscal Year 2015 Energy and Water Appropriations Act after taking a break for the Independence Day recess, though the prospects for completing the bill have been thrown into turmoil with the Senate version of the bill stalled. The bill, which funds the National Nuclear Security Administration, Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management and other DOE programs, will be considered under a modified open rule, meaning an unlimited amount of amendments will be allowed to be offered by lawmakers. The House Appropriations Committee cleared the bill last week, and the House Rules Committee established the parameters for debating the bill on Tuesday night, though the bill isn’t likely to be taken up by the full House until the week of July 7, when lawmakers return from a brief one-week recess for Independence Day.
The pace is slower than House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) had wanted, in part due to complications from the primary loss by House Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), but the committee is still planning to complete its work before the end of this summer. “My goal is to pass all the bills through the committee by the August recess,” Rogers said this week according to CQ.
House Would Provide Slight Cut for NNSA Weapons Program
Faced with a tight funding allocation, the House Appropriations Committee provided $8.20 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s weapons program, a slight $111 million cut from the President’s $8.31 billion request for the program but a $423.2 million increase over FY 2014 enacted funding level. The bill provides $1.52 billion for the NNSA’s nonproliferation account, largely matching the Administration’s $1.55 billion request while providing $345 for construction of the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, an increase of $149 million over the President’s budget request. The increase was largely made possible by cuts to NNSA nonproliferation work in Russia.
For Senate, Path Forward Murky
Once the bill is completed, it’s unclear when—or how—lawmakers might conference with their Senate counterparts. Senate action on their version of the spending bill stalled earlier this month over concerns about a controversial amendment planned by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) dealing with the regulation of carbon emissions, and with the markup of the bill postponed, Congressional aides say there is no guarantee that the bill will ever see action at the committee level. “So far I don’t see a path forward,” one Congressional aide told NS&D Monitor. What’s more likely is that the bill will be folded into an omnibus appropriations package or treated as part of a Continuing Resolution that would fund the government at least until after the mid-term elections in November.
Under a CR scenario, the NNSA would likely seek a waiver to allow it to spend at the level of the President’s request for its weapons program, which represents a $533.9 million increase over FY 2014 enacted levels. “By not taking the vote on the McConnell amendment and having the veto threat it gives us a greater chance of skipping the process and going right to conference but there is at the end of the day not much in the bill that would not be taken care of under a CR, so from a very broad perspective the CR doesn’t give us that many problems,” the aide said.
Will Hoeven Get Chance to Fight Cruise Missile Warhead Cut in Senate Bill?
Such a process would also prevent Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) from offering an amendment to the bill restoring funding for a nuclear cruise missile warhead replacement. Hoeven said last week that he disagreed with a decision by the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee to zero out funding for a study on replacing the nuclear cruise missile warhead. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chair of the subcommittee, said it would not be prudent to fund the cruise missile warhead study until the Air Force commits to moving forward on the replacement and establishes requirements.
