The U.S. Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons programs would be funded at prior-year levels almost through the end of December, under a second stopgap spending plan announced Thursday to keep the federal government operating while Congress tries to finalize its fiscal 2020 budget.
Meanwhile, the top Democrat and Republican members of the House and Senate Armed Services committees plan to meet next week to try, once again, to finalize the fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
Media reported this week that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Pelosi’s regular point of contact for budget negotiations in the Donald Trump administration, met Thursday with the senior Republican and Democrat members of the House and Senate Appropriations committees.
After the meeting, House Appropriations Committee Chair Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) told the Washington Post and other news organizations that Congress would issue another continuing resolution to keep the government open until Dec. 20. President Donald Trump will still have to sign the bill, which Congress had not written at deadline Friday. Politico reported Friday that Congress is gearing up to pass the bill ahead of the Thursday deadline to keep the federal government operating.
Under another “clean” continuing resolution — one without “anomalies” that allow certain programs to exceed their year-ago budgets — the NNSA will be relegated to month-to-month funding at the annualized equivalent of about $15.2 billion: 8.5% lower than the agency’s 2020 requested budget of $16.5 billion.
That scenario would keep the DOE Office of Environmental Management at the 2019 enacted level of about $7.2 billion. That’s roughly equal to the fiscal 2020 level approved by the House of Representatives and less the nearly $7.5 billion passed out of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and awaiting action by the full Senate.
The White House only sought about $6.5 billion for the DOE nuclear cleanup office.
Fiscal year began Oct. 1 with the government funded at 2019 levels under a continuing resolution passed Sept. 27. The House had passed almost all of its annual appropriations bills by the end of the 2019 fiscal year, but the Senate got bogged down about whether to spend Pentagon funds on Trump’s proposed southern border wall and passed no appropriations bills.
The kick of the can did little to get things moving in the Senate, which has passed only one funding bill since fiscal 2020 began. Still waiting on a floor vote in the upper chamber is a package of appropriations measures covering the Pentagon, Energy Department, and other agencies.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.) told reporters the lower chamber would not agree to the so-called “skinny” fiscal 2020 NDAA proposed by his Senate counterpart, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.). Earlier this week, the Senate unanimously agreed to suspend consideration of Inhofe’s bill, which would have authorized only a few of the defense-nuclear programs covered by a full NDAA.
Defense environmental spending, which is the largest tranche of funding for the Office of Environmental Management, would be capped at about $5.6 billion in the full NDAAs passed by both the Senate Armed Services Committee and its counterpart in the House of Representatives.
Vivienne Machi, reporter for Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor affiliate publication Defense Daily, contributed to this report from Washington.
