APPROPRIATORS SO FAR NOT RECEPTIVE TO USEC’S PUSH FOR FUNDING IN CR

USEC has made no secret of the fact that the lack of FY 2013 appropriations when the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1 will mean further financial difficulties for its newly established R&D program, which officially kicked off in June with an infusion of $88 million from DOE that will fund the program through November. Congressional leaders, though, are working on a six-month CR that would run from October to March and given spending restrictions in USEC’s credit facility, the CR could leave the program unfunded for four months. As a result, USEC has been making the case to appropriators that while the R&D program was requested for the first time in FY 2013 budget, it is not technically a ‘new start’ that would be prohibited from receiving funds in the CR because USEC received funds from DOE under the R&D agreement. Congressional appropriators have thus far disagreed, emphasizing that Congress has not appropriated funds for the program and it is therefore a new start. "[DOE] made funding available through uranium transfer. That’s something they can do with their own authority,” one appropriations staffer told NW&M Monitor. “That’s not an appropriation. That’s their own dollars.”

 

The Department could request an anomaly in the CR that would allow spending to continue after Oct. 1, though it remains to be seen if DOE will do so. When the RD&D program was first announced last fall, DOE took a similar tack by requesting transfer authority from Congress to start the program, which ultimately was not granted. “We don’t like what they’ve done in the past when they’ve tried to do new starts without having Congressional say on them,” the staffer said. “That’s why we imposed the notification requirement last year, and you’ve seen very few starts. We’ll have to see what they propose.”