With no major defense-nuclear amendments allowed on the floor, the full House appeared poised this week to approve fiscal year 2023 spending bills for Department of Energy nuclear weapons and waste programs that would meet the White House’s request.
The full House of Representatives, where Democrats have a slim majority, started debate Tuesday on a package of six bills that include the energy and water appropriations act with DOE’s budget.
The energy and water bill included about $21 billion for nuclear weapons programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), some $7.9 billion for nuclear-weapons cleanup at DOE’s Office of Environmental Management and nearly $1.8 billion for civilian nuclear energy and waste programs at the Office of Nuclear Energy.
The proposed NNSA appropriation is about $180 million short of the request but more than $750 million higher than the 2021 appropriation. Most of the funding missing from the request is for maintenance across the nuclear security enterprise. Nearly all nuclear-weapon refurbishments and construction of the agency’s proposed pair of plutonium pit production plants would receive the requested funding.
The NNSA part of the bill would also allow the agency to continue maintaining the B83 megaton-capable gravity bomb the Joe Biden administration wanted to cancel. Unlike the full House’s National Defense Authorization Act, the appropriations package would not permit NNSA to continue work on the sea-launched, nuclear-tipped cruise missile the administration wanted to kill.
Meanwhile, the proposed environmental management budget is roughly even with both the administration’s request and the 2021 appropriation. The House Appropriations Committee did not heed a last-minute request by the administration to increase liquid waste spending at the Hanford Site in Washington State at the expense of solid-waste cleanup there.
The Office of Nuclear Energy would be up about $110 million compared with both the request and the 2021 appropriation. The bill would allow DOE to change the way it keeps track of its budget for nuclear-waste disposal, essentially by moving the money into the Integrated Waste Management Systems subprogram from the Nuclear Waste Disposal account.
Prior to the start of the floor debate Tuesday, Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.), one of Congress’ leading progressive advocates for slowing nuclear-weapons spending, proposed an amendment to the bill that would have blocked the NNSA from using its 2023 appropriation to build a plutonium pit production factory in South Carolina.
The House Rules Committee, which in the lower chamber determines what is allowed on to the House floor, did not admit Garamendi’s amendment to the debate.
Meanwhile, the Senate Appropriations Committee has said it will not publish its version of the 12 annual appropriations bills for 2023 until the end of July, which accounting for a month-long August recess would leave only about a month for Congress to reconcile the inevitable competing spending priorities in the House and Senate. The 2023 fiscal year begins Oct. 1.
