Todd Jacobson
NS&D Monitor
5/23/2014
Senate appropriators will have a little more breathing room to dole out money for the National Nuclear Security Administration in Fiscal Year 2015, according to the subcommittee allocations the Senate Appropriations Committee approved this week. The panel’s Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee will have $34.208 billion to divide up among the NNSA, other Department of Energy programs and the Army Corps of Engineers, $198 million more than House appropriators provided to its Energy and Water Appropriations subcommittee earlier this month. The Senate allocation also represents a $148 million increase over the FY 2014 Energy and Water funding level of $34.060 billion. “Unless something changes in conference, the top level numbers are not very different because it’s relatively flat,” one Congressional aide said. “It will just be a matter of how to prioritize that level of funding.”
The allocations were governed by a $1.014 trillion ceiling on discretionary spending established as part of a budget deal in December, though Republicans on the Senate Appropriations Committee voted against the funding levels, known as 302(b) allocations, over concerns that Mikulski circumvented the budget cap with several workarounds that shifted money into an Overseas Contingency Operations account that is not subject to the budget deal. “That looks to us like we’re trying to avoid marking up to the number we agreed to,” Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said at a May 22 Senate Appropriations Committee hearing. The subcommittee allocations were approved by a 16-14 party line vote.
Defense Split Generous for Senate E&W Bill
The Obama Administration requested $8.3 billion for the NNSA’s weapons program in FY 2015, a $533.9 increase, while it asked for $1.6 billion for the agency’s nonproliferation work, a cut of $398.4 million from FY 2014 levels. Appropriators on the Energy and Water subcommittee will have to balance that funding with other issues like the potential need for additional funding at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, possible extra funding for the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility that the Department plans to put in cold standby at the Savannah River Site, and uranium enrichment research and development.
The subcommittee allocation is broken up into two parts, defense versus non-defense spending, with NNSA and DOE Office of Environmental Management work falling under defense spending. Senate appropriators will have more wiggle room than in years passed with a defense allocation of $18.423 billion, well above the FY 2014 enacted level of $17.2 billion for defense spending in the Energy and Water bill. The House has not released its defense/non-defense splits.
Feinstein Vowed to Boost Nonprolif. Spending
The House and Senate have historically had slightly different priorities when it comes to the NNSA, with the Senate favoring money for nonproliferation work and the House skewing more toward support of the agency’s weapons program. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chair of the Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, emphasized the importance of the NNSA’s nonproliferation program at a panel hearing late last month. “Modernizing the nuclear weapons stockpile should not come at the expense of nonproliferation activities,” Feinstein said. “This year is an egregious example of just that happening, and I’m determined that it will not stand.”
