The House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee yesterday reported out its version of the Fiscal Year 2015 energy spending bill after a relatively brief markup with no amendments offered. For the Department of Energy’s cleanup program, the bill would provide a total of approximately $4.801 billion in defense environmental cleanup funds, approximately $527 million below DOE’s request. It is unclear whether the bill includes $463 million the Department is seeking in defense environmental cleanup funding for a new federal contribution to the federal uranium enrichment D&D fund, which is used to help cover cleanup costs at the Oak Ridge, Paducah and Portsmouth sites. For non-defense environmental cleanup, the House bill would provide $241.17 million, an increase of $15 million from the Department’s request. For uranium enrichment D&D activities, the bill would provide $585.98 million, an increase of $55 million from DOE’s request.
For the National Nuclear Security Administration, the bill would provide approximately $8.2 billion for weapons activities, down $111 million from the NNSA’s FY15 budget request. The bill would largely match the NNSA’s request of $1.5 billion for defense nuclear nonproliferation activities. The NNSA’s nonproliferation-related request represents a cut, however, of almost $400 million from current funding levels. In his opening statement at yesterday’s hearing, Subcommittee Chairman Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) said, “Funding for defense programs is down $50 million. I’m afraid that within that level, it was impossible to meet all of our defense-spending priorities. We priortized funding for our stockpile and naval reactors work, but were unable to replace much of what the Administration’s request cut out of nonproliferation.”
