WASHINGTON, D.C. – Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, while testifying and receiving questions in the Senate, said he is working with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to get more than just a “skinny budget” to Congress.
“We’re working with OMB to release more of that, but that’s still a work in progress,” Wright said in a hearing Wednesday on the Department of Energy’s budget request with the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Energy and Water.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), ranking member of the subcommittee, said to Wright that “we’re having a budget hearing today, we have not seen your full budget request. We need that in front of us, it is required, it’s critical information. When are we going to see that?”
“It’s awful skinny,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) added. “It’s about a page. So I’m working off of an outline.”
Coons added that the “skinny budget” claims to only defund money going to climate change and the “Green New Scam research,” but doesn’t define those terms. “I’m concerned we’ll end up defunding critical research,” he said.
This hearing follows a similar budget hearing in the smaller chamber earlier this month, where members like House subcommittee ranking member Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) expressed similar frustration over a budget not being ready.
“He’s traveling to all these places, but if I were him I’d be sitting in my office getting the budget done for his department,” Kaptur told the Monitor at the Capitol outside the House hearing. “”He’s going to be at over a dozen labs all over the country, but he should be spending time focused on the numbers and getting money out the door.”
