At the last minute Dec. 9, after deadline for last week’s issue of Nuclear Security & Deterrence Monitor, the Senate passed a stopgap spending bill that will keep the federal government open and funded at fiscal 2016 levels through April 28.
An earlier stopgap bill, known officially as a continuing resolution, was set to expire at midnight on Dec. 9. A small group of Senate Democrats had threatened to push the government into a temporary shutdown over Republican reluctance to extend healthcare benefits for retired coal miners in the bridge budget bill, which the House passed a day earlier.
The Senate signed off on the legislation in a 63-36 vote less than an hour before midnight. President Barack Obama signed the legislation shortly afterward.
Under the measure, federal agencies including the Department of Energy would maintain their fiscal 2016 spending levels. After that, the new Congress will have to decide whether to keep spending levels frozen for the following five months, through the end of fiscal 2017 on Sept. 30, or approve a new spending bill for President Donald Trump to sign.
The stopgap bill keeps DOE funded at an annualized level of about $29.5 billion, or about 10 percent less than the outgoing Obama administration requested. The semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration would get an annualized $12.5 billion, or nearly 3 percent less than requested for 2017.
Language in the continuing resolution enables the NNSA to reallocate funding within its nuclear weapons activities portfolio to ensure there are no delays to critical projects in coming months. The measure requires the secretary of energy to notify the House and Senate Appropriations committees within 15 days of a change in funding – positive or negative — to a DOE program, project, or activity in excess of $5 million or 10 percent of its funding in fiscal 2016.
