The Nuclear Regulatory Commission would receive its requested budget for fiscal year 2024, under a Republican-authored spending bill unveiled Wednesday in the House.
The civilian nuclear power and waste regulator would get about $979.2 million for the budget year beginning Oct. 1 if the bill, written by the House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee, becomes law.
The subcommittee was set to mark up its energy and water spending bill on Thursday. The proceedings were scheduled to stream online at the committee’s website. The full committee, the next stop for the legislation, had not scheduled a markup as of Wednesday morning.
As the NRC requested, the spending bill released Wednesday would require the commission to offset nearly all of its appropriation with fees collected from the power plants and other users of radioactive materials the agency regulates. Under the bill, NRC would backfill some $808 million of its appropriation.
House Republicans on the Appropriations Committee are limiting overall federal spending in their bills to the fiscal year 2022 level, which is lower than the cuts Congress agreed to in the deficit deal, the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023. The NRC and a number of other government nuclear energy programs would not be cut.
The Democrat-controlled Senate may not go along with holding budgets to 2022 levels. Most Democrats in Congress voted for the deficit deal.
A minority of House Republicans, who did not support the deficit deal, have lately used parliamentary tactics such as blocking bills from coming to the House floor to express their displeasure with the majority of their caucus’ decision to back the deficit deal. Appropriations bills have to make it off the House floor in order to become law.
