The House Energy and Commerce energy subcommittee will hold a hearing on the Department of Energy’s fiscal-year 2019 budget request on Thursday.
The subcommittee is a Department of Energy (DOE) policy overseer and does not write the agency’s annual budget bills. The hearing is scheduled for 10 a.m. Eastern time and will be webcast from Washington. The subcommittee had not announced the witnesses from DOE at deadline Sunday for Weapons Complex Morning Briefing.
The House Appropriations energy and water subcommittee held budget hearings late last month for DOE, but has not yet marked up the first draft of the agency’s 2019 budget bill.
The White House requested $30.6 billion for DOE in 2019: roughly 1 percent lower than what the agency received in the 2018 omnibus spending bill signed into law last month. The White House prepared its 2018 budget request before Congress erased spending caps for that fiscal year.
Within the 2019 request, DOE seeks:
- $15 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s active weapons programs, or about a three-percent increase from 2018.
- $6.6 billion for the Environmental Management office’s programs to clean up Cold War nuclear-weapon waste. That would be nearly 7.5 percent less than the 2018 omnibus. The request was written before Congress erased federal spending caps for 2018.
