The full House of Representatives on Friday passed in a 217-197 vote a $1.3 trillion package of six spending bills for fiscal 2021, including billions of nuclear cleanup operations managed by the Department of Energy.
President Donald Trump is threatening to veto the entire minibus package. In a 29-page statement of administration policy, the White House on Thursday outlined its opposition to numerous aspects of H.R. 7617.
That includes language in the $49 billion energy and water development bill passed earlier in July by the House Appropriations Committee and then folded into the minibus. Among other things, the measure would provide Energy Department nuclear cleanup with at least $7.5 billion for the budget year beginning Oct. 1.
Democrats provided all 217 votes to pass the package, with 12 voting in opposition. No Republican supported the bill, which was also opposed by one Independent.
The energy and water bill will “responsibly funds our nation’s nuclear deterrent while rejecting the Administration’s dangerous plan to restart nuclear explosive testing,” House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee Chairwoman Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) said in a Friday press release.
The administration “strongly opposes” both the $7.5 billion slotted in the House bill for the DOE Office of Environmental Management – roughly equal to its current funding, but $1.4 billion over what the White House requested in February – as well the $23.5 billion in “emergency funding” it would provide throughout the Energy Department, according to the policy statement.
The DOE nuclear cleanup office would share is about $3 billion of the emergency funding. Out of that, the Hanford Site in Washington state would receive $230 million worth of new tank farm infrastructure, while $170 million would go toward decommissioning excess facilities at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.
House Republicans have complained they were not consulted about the extra funding and predicted the GOP-led Senate will delete the money. The Trump administration said the DOE emergency funding is actually geared toward non-emergency infrastructure, research and development, and “accelerated cleanup items.”
During the spring, a coalition of groups – ranging from the Energy Communities Alliance to labor unions – urged congressional leaders to adopt $7 billion in extra Office of Environmental Management spending on shovel-ready projects to help the affected communities near DOE sites recover from the COVID-19-related economic downturn.
They likened such a move to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act stimulus spending package of 2009.
The White House, though, this week urged Congress to reallocate the $1.4 billion above the EM budget request to “high national security priorities to maintain a credible nuclear deterrent.” The House minibus would provide $18 billion for DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration, $2 billion less than requested for 2021.
The non-emergency energy and water portion of the appropriations bill would provide over $2.5 billion for the two DOE offices at the Hanford Site — $752 million more than the total Hanford spending sought by the administration, and $38 million above the amount enacted by Congress for fiscal 2020.
Savannah River Site cleanup in South Carolina would receive $1.5 billion for fiscal 2021 under the House plan, about $83 million more than the $1.46 billion enacted by Congress for fiscal 2020. It would also be $6.6 million more than the amount requested by DOE for fiscal 2021.
The House bill would provide nearly $407 million for cleanup at the Oak Ridge Site in Tennessee, down from the $450 million in the current budget year, but more than the $263 million sought by the administration.
Likewise, the House bill would restore legacy cleanup spending at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico to $220 million, the same enacted for fiscal 2020, which ends Sept. 30. The level is $100 million above the $120 million sought by the Energy Department.
The Senate has yet to issue any appropriations bills for fiscal 2021.
