In a nail-biting finish, the House passed its version of the fiscal 2026 Energy and Water Appropriations bill on the floor Thursday 214-213 after two days of debate and amendments.
The four Republicans that voted against the bill were Reps. Thomas Massie (Ky.), Brian Fitzpatrick (Penn.), Tom McClintock (Calif.) and Scott Perry (Penn.).
Not a single Democrat voted for the bill. Given the four Republican nay votes and the 209 Democrats nays, two more Democratic no votes were needed to kill the bill. However, three Democrats and one Republican abstained from voting, allowing the bill to scoot through. Reps. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas), Mike Quigley (D-Ill.), Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.) and Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), did not vote on the measure.
If it becomes law, the measure (H.R. 4553) that passed the House Appropriations Committee in July would provide more than $25 billion for DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) with more money for weapons stockpile modernization and nuclear Navy upgrades, Energy and Water Appropriations subcommittee chair Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.) said in testimony.
Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), the Energy & Water subcommittee’s ranking Democrat, lamented in testimony how the new spending plan would cut thousands of jobs at DOE national laboratories. Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.), in testimony after the bills passing, criticized the Republican majority, and the Democrats that did not dissent from the bill, for cutting clean energy and energy efficiency spending in favor of nuclear weapons.
“Where did the money go? It went into nuclear weapons programs,” Garamendi said. “The Sentinel program? Over $200 billion would be spent replacing the Minuteman III missile. Why? Why are we doing that? Why are we creating more, putting more money into plutonium pit production? Why do we have a new useless rocket that we want to put on a submarine?”
Garamendi and Kaptur also both lamented cuts to defense nuclear nonproliferation in the past.