Todd Jacobson
NS&D Monitor
1/10/2014
Congressional appropriators have largely wrapped up work on the Energy and Water portion of a planned omnibus spending bill for the remainder of the fiscal year, but there is growing sentiment among Capitol Hill aides that a short-term Continuing Resolution will be necessary to give lawmakers time to iron out other portions of the bill. Lawmakers had hoped to meet an ambitious Jan. 15 deadline for completing the omnibus bill, when the current Continuing Resolution expires, but some of the more politically challenging spending bills have slowed the process and aides speculated that a completed package might not be ready until the weekend or early next week. Such a schedule would leave little time for both chambers to take up the bill next week before Jan. 15. Earlier this week, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) told reporters that appropriators may need “some more flexibility in terms of a little bit more time … but we’re not sure yet.”
In addition to the Energy and Water bill, the Defense, Military Construction-Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Commerce-Justice-Science, Legislative Branch, and Transportation-HUD bills are also believed to be completed. Congressional aides cautioned, however, that “everything is open until it’s closed” because there could be trading across bills in the omnibus. “If there are major sticking points it’s not going to be in the Energy and Water portion of the bill,” one Congressional aide told NW&M Monitor.
Subcommittee Allocations Unclear
Lawmakers have been extremely tight-lipped about the contents of the bill and have not released details about the allocations provided to each appropriations subcommittee. The amount of the allocation is important because it determines how much funding each spending bill contains. The House-passed bill, for instance, contained $30.4 billion in Energy and Water spending, while the Senate version included $34.8 billion. The agreement reached by lawmakers last month provides $1.012 billion for the entire omnibus, which splits the difference between the overall allocations used by each chamber to construct spending bills this year.
The Senate version of the Energy and Water bill matched the Administration’s $7.9 billion request for the NNSA’s weapons program and boosted funding for the agency’s nonproliferation work by $40 million, to $2.2 billion. In contrast, the House version of the bill cut $193 million from the Administration’s weapons request, providing $7.7 billion, while it trimmed $40 million from the Administration’s request for the nonproliferation account. One of the biggest sticking points involves work on the B61 refurbishment. Senate appropriators provided only $369 million of the Administration’s $537 million request for work on the bomb refurbishment over concerns about the rising cost of the life extension program. In contrast, House appropriators provided $560.7 million for the B61 refurbishment, an increase of $23.7 million.
