Given the shrinking chances of Congress agreeing on fiscal year 2022 appropriations by the end of the month, the Joe Biden administration on Tuesday requested that any continuing resolution Congress passes to extend 2021 budgets protect the short-term operations of the Department of Energy’s uranium enrichment cleanups.
As Weapons Complex Monitor has reported, the government is increasingly tapping other monetary silos to preserve the viability of the Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommission Fund (UED&D). The fund, which pays for cleaning up old uranium enrichment facilities in Tennessee, Ohio and Kentucky, is one of the three major budget accounts at DOE’s Office of Environmental Management.
Language is needed in any continuing resolution, or CR, to provide a transfer of $841 million from the United States Enrichment Corp. (USEC) fund in order to keep UED&D at the fiscal 2021 level of $841 million, the White House said this week.
Prior to the transfer from the USEC Fund, which DOE proposed in its budget request, the estimated balance of the UED&D Fund at the beginning of fiscal 2022, which starts Oct. 1, will be only $36 million.
“Without this anomaly, the program will not have sufficient total resources to continue cleanup activities and maintain the workforce at the Oak Ridge, Portsmouth, and Paducah sites during the period of the CR,” the White House said in an eight-page summary of issues that will need special consideration in a continuing resolution.provided to Congress on special requests in any continuing resolution.
The administration requested $831 million in UED&D funds for fiscal year 2022.
While the House of Representatives has passed a fiscal 2022 energy and water development budget, which includes DOE, the Senate has not. After passage of bills by both chambers, any differences have to be negotiated in a House-Senate conference committee before going to the president’s desk for his signature. These things take time and there is only slightly more than three weeks left in the fiscal year.
In situations like this, which have become the norm rather than the exception, lawmakers typically pass a continuing resolution holding spending at prior-year levels until a new budget becomes final. This arrangement works well for most line items, although there are always some exceptions.
DOE does not comment on active legislation, a spokesperson said Thursday.
