House energy and water apps bill trimming EM passes by single vote

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 House bill would curb Department of Energy nuclear remediation funding by about three-quarters of a billion dollars. 

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 about $48.8 billion for the Department of Energy, which is $1.4 billion below the fiscal 2025 enacted level, according to a summary of the legislation. 

DOE’s Office of Environmental Management would receive $7.7 billion for its work, including continued remediation of sites contaminated by decades of Cold War-era nuclear weapons production, according to the summary. 

According to the bill report, Environmental Management is to also make use of $310 million in the prior fiscal year’s balance for its work. 

 “[T]his bill turns its back on communities still living with the toxic legacy of America’s atomic past,” according to views of House minority Democrats included in the bill report. “The bill eliminates funding for the Corps of Engineers’ Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program, and it cuts the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management by $779 million, or 9 percent. This will delay the cleanup these communities across the nation have been promised for decades.’

The version that passed Thursday would provide Defense Environmental Cleanup with $6.5 billion in fiscal 2026 with $338 million for Non-Defense Environmental Cleanup of civilian and energy-research projects. The Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund, devoted to remediation of the gaseous diffusion plant sites at Paducah, Ky., Piketon, Ohio and Oak Ridge, Tenn., would receive $844 million. 

As usual the Hanford Site in Richland, Wash., would receive the biggest chunk of the Environmental Management budget with $2.9 billion going toward remediation of the former plutonium production site. 

The final House bill also strips out DOE offices devoted to former President Joe Biden’s priorities on diversity, equity and inclusion. 

The House Republican majority said the bill would also shift money from Clean Energy Demonstration projects to support President Donald Trump’s priorities of advanced nuclear and small modular reactors. 

“This bill has been considered during a time of remarkable upheaval for the [Appropriations] Committee,” the House Democrats went on to say. “Since taking office in January 2025, the executive branch has been engaged in a rampant, unlawful, and unconstitutional disregard for spending laws.”

The bill that passed Thursday is the third of a dozen appropriations packages that Congress is rushing to finalize prior to the end of fiscal 2025 on Sept. 30. By that point, Congress must either pass a final appropriations bill or a continuing resolution in order to avoid a government shutdown. 

The bill 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 bill’s 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.

Wayne Barber contributed to this article.