President Donald Trump on Thursday signed another stopgap spending bill that will keep the federal government running nearly three months into the 2020 budget year.
Major news organizations reported the president signed the agreement after the Senate earlier in the day voted 74-20 to pass a House amendment that extends the current continuing resolution to Dec. 20. Without approval, the continuing resolution would have expired on Thursday.
All the votes against the Senate measure came from Republican senators.
The bill would keep funding constant at fiscal 2019 levels, while allowing for a handful of exemptions including a 3.1% pay raise for the military. The House passed its amendment to H.R. 3055 by a vote of 231-192, with 12 Republicans voting to support the bill and 10 Democrats in opposition.
Fiscal 2020 began on Oct. 1 with the House having passed 10 of 12 of its appropriations bills for the year and the Senate passing none. The Senate has since then approved one piece of spending legislation, but has yet to act on a package that would cover the Departments of Energy and Defense, among other agencies.
Two sources on Capitol Hill confirmed that outstanding fiscal 2020 spending bills remain caught up in a battle between the White House and congressional Democrats regarding Trump’s desired U.S.-Mexico border wall. The White House has requested $8.6 billion in new funding for the wall and to backfill $3.6 billion in military construction funds that have already been taken for border barrier construction.
The extension will keep the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management funded at the fiscal 2019 annualized rate of about $7.2 billion, which is roughly equal to what the House of Representatives passed in June for fiscal 2020, less than the $7.5 billion the Senate Appropriations Committee endorsed in September, and well above the $6.5 billion proposed by the Trump administration for the year.
The combined budget for the two offices serving the Hanford Site in Washington state, the cleanup office’s most complex and costly nuclear remediation mission, would stay funded at the annual equivalent of $2.4 billion, rather than the just over $2 billion proposed for fiscal 2020 by the Energy Department. The House would keep combined spending for the Hanford offices at roughly the fiscal 2019 level, while the Senate Appropriations Committee would boost it to over $2.5 billion.
The National Nuclear Security Administration would stay funded at $15.2 billion, or about 8.5% less than the $16.5 billion the White House sought for fiscal 2020. The energy and water bill passed by the House in June would provide $16 billion for the semiautonomous Department of Energy agency, while Senate appropriators signed off on $17 billion in legislation still waiting on a floor vote.
The continuing resolution would keep NNSA nuclear weapons spending at $11 billion, rather than the 10% increase to about $12.5 billion sought by the administration for 2020.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is funded at the annualized level of about $910 million under the continuing resolution. That is $10 million below what it requested for fiscal 2020, but more than the $900 million offered by the House or the roughly $855 million recommended by Senate appropriators.
As long as the continuing resolution remains in place, the Energy Department and Nuclear Regulatory Commission will receive no funding to resume licensing of the nuclear waste repository under Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
That seems likely to remain the case even when Congress does pass its budgets for the agencies. The Trump administration sought roughly $150 million in fiscal 2020 for DOE, the applicant, and the NRC, the licensor. Appropriators in both chambers zeroed out the requests in favor of funding to advance temporary, centralized storage of used nuclear power plant fuel ahead of disposal.
Meanwhile, House and Senate conferees continue to negotiate the final version of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2020. The policy bill authorizes spending levels for Energy Department defense nuclear programs, with the actual money coming from separate appropriations legislation.
“The National Defense Authorization Act is so important because it takes care of our troops,” Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) tweeted on Wednesday. “That’s why it has passed for 58 years in a row, and that’s why I’m going to make sure that it passes again.”
However, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said the chambers remain at odds over the border wall and Trump administration plans to establish a Space Force within the Air Force, Politico reported.
“There’s substantial opposition within my caucus to both of those two things, and we’re having a hard time trying to get around that,” according to the HASC chairman.
The version of the NDAA passed by both the Senate and House Armed Services committees capped defense environmental spending for the DOE nuclear cleanup office at about $5.6 billion. Defense environmental is the largest chunk of funding for the Office of Environmental Management.
The Senate’s 2020 NDAA approves $16.5 billion for the National Nuclear Security Administration, while the House version backs only about $15.8 billion for NNSA.
Both versions of the NDAA eliminate the $26 million the administration sought for defense nuclear waste disposal – money that would be used for Yucca Mountain licensing.
ExchangeMonitor affiliate publication Defense Daily contributed to this article.
