House Appropriations Committee Chair Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) on Thursday said she would retire from Congress rather than seeking re-election in 2020.
“I am honored that my colleagues in Congress elected me as the first Chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee and will fight vigorously for House Democratic priorities as I negotiate spending bills for fiscal years 2020 and 2021,” Lowey said in a statement.
Lowey joined Congress in 1989, and became ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee in 2013. She was elevated to the chairmanship in January after Democrats won the House majority in the November 2018 midterm elections.
Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), who chairs the Energy and Water subcommittee within the Appropriations Committee, praised Lowey’s decades of public service. “The admiration I hold for Nita is beyond bounds,” she said.
Kaptur will also consider placing her name into consideration to succeed Lowey as chairwoman of the full committee when the time comes.
Another of Lowey’s peers thanked her for reversing the House’s prior support for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada.
“I am especially grateful to Chairwoman Lowey for her leadership in blocking the dangerous efforts to revitalize Yucca Mountain – and I look forward to working with her eventual successor to do the same,” Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) tweeted on Thursday.
Under the previous Republican majority, the House Appropriations Committee and then full chamber supported the Trump administration’s requests for funding to resume licensing for the disposal site at the Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commission. For the just-ended fiscal 2019, the House actually added $100 million to the White House request. In the end, though, the funding was zeroed out in the face of continued Senate opposition to Yucca Mountain.
For fiscal 2020, which began Oct. 1, House and Senate appropriators both blanked the administration’s latest request for Yucca Mountain licensing funding. The House in June passed legislation funding DOE and the NRC, while the full Senate has yet to vote on a corresponding bill passed by its Appropriations Committee in September. In the absence of a final 2020 spending plan, the federal government is funded by a stopgap budget through Nov. 21.
The House approved the $7.2 billion recommended by the Appropriations Committee to fund Department of Energy nuclear cleanup operations through Sept. 30, 2020. That is roughly flat with the prior-year funding for DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, but $700 million above what the White House requested.
The Senate Appropriations Committee last month approved $7.4 billion for the nuclear cleanup office as part of its energy and water package, but the measure has yet to be voted on by the full Senate.
House appropriators, and then the full lower chamber, cut the 2020 request for DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) by about 4%, to $16 million. While that would represent a 4.5% raise from fiscal 2019 funding, NNSA Principal Deputy Administrator William Bookless indicated last week the civilian nuclear-weapon agency still hopes to work with Congress to claw back some of the reduced funding.
