The House of Representatives voted 219 to 208 Thursday on a party line to approve a package of seven fiscal 2022 spending bills including one that sets the budget for the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management at $7.76 billion.
The bill, which includes DOE along with the other agencies as part of H.R. 4502, sets appropriations for the 12 months starting Oct. 1. It must now be considered by the U.S. Senate, which plans a mark up session for its version of the 2022 DOE budget next Wednesday, Aug. 4 at 10 a.m. Eastern Time.
As a result, the Senate would at least start its legislative work on the fiscal 2022 budget before adjourning for its traditional August recess, when lawmakers return to their states to meet with constituents.
The almost $7.8 billion budget for the Environmental Management (EM) office is an increase from the roughly $7.6-billion enacted for fiscal 2021.
Defense Environmental Cleanup, the largest tranche of spending at EM, is set just shy of $6.6 billion, up from the $6.4 billion budgeted for fiscal 2021 and roughly equal to the White House request fiscal 2022, once a transfer into the $831-million Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund is taken into account.
The uranium fund is down $10 million from $841 million in fiscal 2021. Non-Defense Environmental Cleanup would rise to $339 million from the prior year’s $319 million, under the just-approved spending plan.
Before getting to the House floor, appropriators reinserted more than $10 million in community funding for payment in lieu of taxes funding for areas around the Hanford Site in Washington state and the Savannah River Site in South Carolina. DOE omitted these funds from its budget request.
