The Fiscal Year 2013 budget process is set to take a step forward as early as today, with the White House Office of Management and Budget expected to issue the Department of Energy its “passback” memorandum with OMB’s take on the Department’s budget request. The “passback” comes after DOE formulated and submitted its FY 2013 budget request to OMB earlier this year. It remains unclear how OMB has chosen to fund DOE’s Office of Environmental Management next year, though it is almost certain to be less than the approximately $6.1 billion EM sought for FY 2012. DOE has the ability to appeal some of OMB’s decisions before a final budget request for FY 2013 is submitted to Congress in early February.
According to previous budget projections, the Administration was expecting to seek $7.95 billion for the NNSA’s weapons program in FY2013, but most observers expect that the funding difficulties encountered in Congress with the NNSA’s $7.6 billion FY2012 request could result in the FY2013 request being revised downward. NNSA also had projected that $2.77 billion would be needed for its nonproliferation account in FY2013, up from the $2.55 billion it requested in FY2012.
Jobs