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 20 funding for commerce, justice, and space, as well as agriculture, interior, military construction and veterans’ affairs, and 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.
The Senate Appropriations Committee on Sept. 12 approved an energy and water development package that includes $7.4 billion in funding for the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management for fiscal 2020. The figure is more than the roughly $7.2 billion approved by the House of Representatives in a “minibus” spending package in June, or the $6.5 billion proposed by the Trump administration.
The nuclear cleanup office at DOE is funded at about $7.2 billion for fiscal 2019 to manage environmental remediation of 16 Cold War and Manhattan Project sites nationwide.
“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.
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 House NDAA would authorize DOE’s Office of Environmental Management just under $5.6 billion for its largest spending category, Defense Environmental Cleanup, while the Senate version approves around $5.5 billion as requested.
The original version of this article was published in Weapons Complex Monitor affiliate publication Defense Daily.
