Senators left Washington for a weeklong recess Friday without passing their fiscal 2017 energy and water spending bill, but the chamber’s Republican leader has vowed to try again on May 9, despite no signs that the partisan strife which prevented a floor vote this week will abate.
The bill was cruising toward a vote Wednesday when a junior Republican senator’s controversial amendment to block a U.S. purchase of Iranian heavy water — part of the Obama administration’s role in a multilateral nuclear nonproliferation deal with Tehran — split the Senate largely along party lines and prevented a procedural move that would have wrapped up debate on the $37.5 billion spending package.
The incident raises the specter of yet another stopgap spending measure that would freeze the Energy Department’s budget at current levels and prevent the start of new DOE programs until Congress can produce a permanent 2017 spending bill.
However, Republican leader Sen. Mitch McConnelll (R-Ky.) — who has a chance to show a Republican Senate can pass the 12 federal appropriations bills on schedule in an election year — has dug in his heels and scheduled a third vote to end debate on the Senate’s energy and water spending bill. Scheduled for 5:30 p.m. EDT May 9, the vote would, if successful, force senators at last to vote on the bill itself.
The Senate measure includes some $31 billion for DOE, within which is more than $6 billion for legacy waste cleanup managed by the agency’s Office of Environmental Management.
Passage seemed like a sure thing this week until Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) introduced an amendment Monday to block DOE from using any of its 2017 budget to buy Iranian heavy water. Heavy water can be used to produce plutonium. The Energy Department reportedly plans to buy 32 tons of the water for about $8 million, some of which would be used at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. The rest of the water would be sold.
Cotton took to the Senate floor on Wednesday and Thursday to defend his amendment, saying it was a logical and timely response to the Obama administration’s April 22 announcement — released late in the day after the Senate left chambers — that it would buy the heavy water.
Senate Republicans, who universally opposed the Iran nuclear deal, backed Cotton all week.
“I support his [Cotton’s] policy objective,” McConnell said Wednesday on the floor. “I don’t know why it wouldn’t be supported by every member of the Senate, regardless of party.”
The U.S. has purchased heavy water from other nations, including Canada and India, but McConnell said the deal the White House announced April 22 would be different, because “U.S. funds would be sent to Iran,” and most likely used to modernize Tehran’s military.
Democrats were unswayed. On Wednesday, all but four voted against ending debate on the spending bill. On Thursday, McConnell tried again to end debate, but the measure again failed to carry, again along party lines.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), ranking member on the Senate Appropriations Committee, warned her colleagues on the floor Wednesday the White House had threatened to veto the 2017 energy and water appropriations package bill if it arrived on President Barack Obama’s desk with the Cotton amendment.
On Thursday, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), the Democratic leader, reiterated the minority’s position that Cotton’s amendment was an unacceptable “poison pill rider” that would render the spending bill dead on arrival at the White House. Reid implored Republicans to check the junior senator from Arkansas and persuade him to remove the amendment, as Democrats otherwise have no objections to the bill.
“It would be to everyone’s interest if we would simply step back, pass the bill that it exists, and try to figure out some other way to embarrass the President,” Reid said on the floor Thursday in a rebuttal to McConnell’s opening remarks.
Historically, both parties have sought to avoid political responsibility for derailing the appropriations process — something that happens more often than not.
Meanwhile, the House has yet to schedule its own 2017 energy and water appropriations bill for a floor vote. The House Appropriations Committee approved the bill April 19.
