The House anticipates voting Thursday on a spending package that includes the Department of Energy’s 2019 budget, though the chamber’s Rules Committee only finished writing the rules of floor debate Tuesday and still must consider what to do with roughly 60 proposed amendments.
The so-called minibus package comprises three appropriations bills already approved by the House Appropriations Committee, including an energy and water measure that would provide about $35 million for DOE in the budget year starting Oct. 1.
Within the DOE total is about $15 billion for active nuclear weapons programs managed by the agency’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), and nearly $7 million for its Office of Environmental Management: the steward of Cold War nuclear-weapons cleanup. The bill also provides roughly $970 million for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the regulator for civilian nuclear power plants and the waste they produce.
If the House bill became law, it would provide a year-over-year funding boost for NNSA and the NRC, but a slight cut for the Environmental Management office from the 2018 omnibus passed in March.
House Democrats have proposed amendments to strip out funding for a new low-yield, submarine-launched ballistic-missile warhead to be built by the NNSA, while representatives have proposed taking out some $270 million in funding intended to restart DOE’s application to license Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev., as a permanent nuclear-waste repository.
