Barring any more last-minute surprises, the Senate’s version of the Energy Department’s fiscal 2017 budget appears set to cruise to a vote as soon as Thursday, after lawmakers on Wednesday stripped the measure of a controversial amendment that prompted Democrats to filibuster the proposal three times in as many weeks.
The fourth time, however, may have been the charm, as 97 senators voted Wednesday to end debate on the 2017 Energy and Water Appropriations Act — a $37.5 billion bill that contains some $31 billion for DOE. The procedural step brings the first budget bill of the season a step closer to final approval in the Senate. Now, the upper chamber will cast that vote by 6:30 p.m. Eastern time Thursday.
The roadblock to a final vote, as it has been since April 27, was an amendment from junior Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), which would have prohibited the Energy Department from using its 2017 appropriation to buy Iranian heavy water — one of the things the Obama administration has pledged to do as part of the U.S.-led nuclear arms-reduction pact with Iran finalized in 2015.
Senate Democrats took the amendment for an attack on that multilateral agreement, a major foreign-policy accomplishment for the Obama administration that not even a single Senate Republican approved. The White House promised to veto the energy and water bill if it arrived with Cotton’s amendment attached.
On Wednesday, however, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Appropriations energy and water subcommittee, withdrew the amendment on Cotton’s behalf after a largely ceremonial vote to end debate on the proposal. The vote failed 57-42, indicating that while the Republican majority and even some Democrats disapproved of buying Tehran’s heavy water, not enough Democrats would break ranks and send the underlying bill to President Barack Obama’s desk with the amendment intact.
Alexander himself opposed the amendment, calling it “bad policy” that could let heavy water, which can be used to make nuclear bombs, fall into unfriendly hands.
Although the path is now clear for the Senate to proceed with consideration of other appropriations bills, it is still not clear that Congress will get 12 unified spending bills to the White House by Sept. 30, when the current fiscal year ends; The House has yet to schedule floor consideration for a single spending bill.
