It is becoming increasingly obvious that Congress will need to pass a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the Department of Energy and all other federal agencies open beyond the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, a panel of Washington, D.C., insiders said Thursday.
“It’s almost guaranteed we are going to end up in a CR.” Colin Jones, vice president and deputy general manager for North American nuclear at Jacobs, said during the online roundtable discussion sponsored by the Energy Communities Alliance (ECA).
The ECA, which represents localities near Energy Department facilities, held the event to provide a glimpse of what to expect from Congress and the Energy Department prior to the Nov. 3 election.
In July, the House of Representatives passed a package of six spending bills worth $1.3 trillion for the budget year beginning Oct. 1. President Donald Trump has threatened to veto the so-called minibus should it be adopted by the Senate in its current form. Among other things, the administration said the House would spend too much on nuclear cleanup operations at the Department of Energy and as a result siphon money away from the agency’s mission to ensure an enhanced nuclear deterrent.
The Senate has yet to issue its appropriations bills for fiscal 2021, with just weeks to go. Legislative schedules indicate there are no more than a dozen days left before Sept. 30 when both the House and Senate are in session.
It typically takes 10 legislative days to pass a “mildly controversial” bill, so there will be minimal time for the two chambers to agree on any full appropriations package, said DOE Assistant Secretary for Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs Melissa Burnison. The House and Senate also have yet to agree on a new economic relief package for the COVID-19 pandemic, she added.
A continuing resolution would effectively freeze federal agency spending at prior-year levels until Congress can devise and pass new appropriations bills. The question appears to be whether the stopgap spending plan will last three months or six months, Burnison said.
“It’s going to be a CR, probably three months,” requiring Congress to revisit the issue in December, said Sean Todd, president of Virginia-based consulting and lobbying firm Fox Potomac Resources President Sean Todd. The other panelists who expressed an opinion seemed to agree with this assessment.
There is “no prayer” of a full appropriations package passing in September, said Baker Elmore, director of federal programs for the Nuclear Energy Institute, the Washington, D.C.-based trade association for the nuclear industry.
Dylan Kama, an ECA program director, said recent presidential elections suggest a final package for fiscal 2021 might not come until March or afterward, with CRs filling the void until then.
Among other things, the House minibus would provide the DOE Office of Environmental Management with at least $7.5 billion, about equal with current funding but well above the roughly $6.2 billion sought by the White House for 2021. On top of the regular appropriation, the House minibus approved an additional $23.5 billion in emergency funding for the Energy Department, with $3 billion of that going toward nuclear cleanup.
The House is treating the minibus as something of a quasi-stimulus bill, said Longenecker & Associates Senior Vice President Martin Schneider. The fact that the Democratic Party-controlled chamber is willing provide significantly more money to Environmental Management shows it trusts the office run nuclear projects and be an effective steward of the funds, he added.
Environmental Management at DOE is not seen as a partisan program, said Mike Nartker, chief strategist at the cleanup office.
Even if Congress should plus-up the nuclear remediation budget beyond $7.5 billion, the figure will eventually come back down in a future year, predicted Jones, who served five years in leadership posts at the Office of Environmental Management between 2010 and 2015, including a stint as chief of staff.
The 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act gave EM a large infusion of extra cash early in the Obama administration. When the extra funding ran out, however, the appropriation dropped sharply one year from $6 billion to $5.3 billion, Jones said.
Even presuming a CR is passed, Environmental Management managers might still try to keep spending well below the rate of $7.5 billion, because something closer to the $6.2 billion option could still end up as the final 2021 appropriation, Jones said.
As for the presidential election, Schneider said he doubts there will be “a gigantic policy change” at Environmental Management if Democrat Joe Biden defeats President Donald Trump. That would likely have greater impact at DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration, he added.
There could big reductions of 10% or more to the “weapons side” of NNSA, with more emphasis on nonproliferation, Schneider added.
The NNSA was funded at $16.7 billion in fiscal 2020. The administration proposed $19.8 billion and the House has approved $18 billion in its bill for fiscal 2021.
But weapons stockpile issues will still be a big issue for a Biden administration, Todd said without citing specifics.
Selection of a permanent DOE assistant secretary for environmental management will likely be a top priority in either a Biden or second Trump administration, he added. The last permanent EM-1, Anne Marie White, resigned in mid-June 2019. William (Ike) White, a career federal official, has led day-to-day operations at the Office of Environmental Management since then.
