With less than a month left until fiscal year 2024 begins, the White House has asked Congress for a short-term continuing resolution to freeze federal budgets at 2023 levels.
Media reported last week that leaders in the House and Senate have remained open to the requested stopgap bill. Fiscal year 2024 begins Oct. 1.
The impasse between the Republican-controlled House and the Democrat-controlled Senate is unrelated to DOE nuclear weapons programs. The two chambers disagree on whether the mandatory government spending cuts included with this spring’s legislative deal to increase U.S. borrowing caps should be treated as a ceiling or a floor for federal budgets.
Those cuts do not apply to the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which under a continuing resolution would miss out on a roughly $2-billion increase to $24 billion or so. A few differences aside, House and Senate appropriators largely agree on the figure, which roughly matches what the chambers authorized in their versions of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2024.
Authorization bills set policy and spending limits for separate appropriations bills, which provide money from the federal treasury for agencies to spend.
As with the various 2024 appropriations bills, the House and Senate are set for a fight over the policies in their separate versions of the National Defense Authorization Act. The House’s version includes prohibitions on abortion and diversity programs at the Pentagon, all of which Democrats, almost universally, support.
