Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Thursday filed cloture on the motion to proceed with two appropriations bills for fiscal 2020, opening up the possibility of the Senate voting next week on first a minibus bill full of domestic spending and then following with a second minibus that includes the Department of Energy.
The first package includes fiscal 2020 funding for commerce, justice, and space, as well as agriculture, interior, military construction and veterans’ affairs, transportation, and housing and urban development.
Should it garner sufficient bipartisan support and be passed, the Senate will then take up the second package, McConnell said. That minibus would include funding for defense, labor, health and human services, state and foreign operations, and energy and water.
“Our Democratic colleagues insist that despite their political differences with President [Donald] Trump, they’re still prepared to tackle important legislation and do our work for the American people,” McConnell said in a floor speech Thursday as the senators trickled out of the Capitol Building and left Washington, D.C., for the weekend. “Well, next week, they will have an opportunity to prove it.”
The Senate Appropriations Committee voted last month to advance the fiscal 2020 defense and energy appropriations bills to the full chamber. However, the Senate failed to vote on any appropriations legislation before the new federal budget year began on Oct. 1. Congress instead approved a stopgap continuing resolution that keeps the government open through Nov. 21 at fiscal 2019 funding levels.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) told reporters Thursday on Capitol Hill that he was pessimistic of reaching a bipartisan conference agreement on the defense appropriations bill by Nov. 21.
“I don’t see all of this happening” before Nov. 21, he said.
House and Senate appropriations leaders are continuing to negotiate to resolve areas of conflict within their respective bills, he noted.
A bicameral conference committee continues to negotiate the final National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2020, several Senate Armed Services Committee members said Thursday.
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), who chairs the SASC cybersecurity subcommittee, said “as of yesterday, there was no update” on negotiations with the House. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who chairs the SASC personnel subcommittee, said he had heard from committee Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) that negotiations were “moving along.”
“I think the delay has more to do with other things going on on the Hill right now than any significant differences in the NDAA,” he said.
The $48.9 billion energy and water bill passed by the Senate Appropriations Committee last month would provide about $39 billion for the Department of Energy. But it includes none of the roughly $150 million the Energy Department and Nuclear Regulatory Commission requested to resume licensing of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository after a nearly decade-long freeze. Instead, the bill supports initiating a pilot program for interim storage of radioactive waste.
Senate Appropriations energy and water subcommittee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), whose panel writes the first draft of the legislation, has long backed interim storage over the repository as a means for DOE to more quickly meet its legal mandate to remove used fuel from U.S. nuclear power plants.
The House in June passed a nearly $1 trillion “minibus” spending bill that included $46.4 billion for energy and water operations. However, it also blanked the Energy Department and NRC on Yucca Mountain licensing funding. Instead, it would provide just shy of $50 million for “integrated management” of nuclear waste, including $25 million for advancing interim storage. That is a turnaround for the lower chamber, which had supported two prior Trump administration requests to restart Yucca licensing before Democrats retook the majority in the November 2018 midterms.
The Senate bill would budget the Nuclear Regulatory Commission at $841.2 million for salaries and expenses in fiscal 2020, about $66.5 million less than requested. The approved House measure would provide a total of $885.2 million for NRC salaries and expenses.
Both measures reject the administration’s request to transfer the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP) from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to the Department of Energy. The House for fiscal 2020 approved $155 million for the program, which conducts environmental cleanup at properties that were radioactively contaminated from the 1940s to 1960s by nuclear-weapon and energy operations of the Manhattan Engineer District and Atomic Energy Commission. The corresponding Senate energy and water bill would give $200 million for FUSRAP.
The original version of this article was published in RadWaste Monitor sister publication Defense Daily.
