The House and Senate are a step closer to resolving their differences on a three-bill appropriations package that includes the Department of Energy fiscal 2019 budget, after the upper chamber on Wednesday voted to begin final negotiations on the measure.
In a procedural move that cleared the way for lawmakers from each chamber to negotiate a compromise bill for President Donald Trump to sign, the Senate voted unanimously to proceed to conference on H.R. 5895: the so-called minibus appropriations act that includes the proposed DOE appropriation for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.
Lawmakers were supposed to meet in a conference committee Thursday to negotiate a final version of the legislation. However, the meeting was abruptly canceled.
“The [conference] meeting has been postponed due to scheduling conflicts,” a spokesperson for the House Appropriations Committee said by email. “The new date is TBD but we expect it to be next week.”
The House wants to appropriate $35.5 billion for DOE in the upcoming budget year, while the Senate recommended about $35 billion. Either appropriation would be a small increase from the current funding level, and much more than the $30.6 billion requested by the administration— mostly owing to proposed cuts to non-nuclear parts of the agency’s portfolio to which lawmakers did not agree.
Both chambers have endorsed fiscal 2019 spending packages that provide in the neighborhood of $7 billion for DOE nuclear cleanup operations.
The Senate minibus passed June 25, which covers funding for energy and water development programs, among others, would provide $7.2 billion in total funding for the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management. That is $300 million more than the $6.9 billion passed by the House in its own minibus on June 8. The administration had asked for $6.6 billion.
At the largest cleanup project, the Senate package provides $1.573 billion for the Office of River Protection at the Hanford Site in Washington state, while Hanford’s Richland Operations Office would get $838.17 million. The Office of River Protection is in charge of 56 million gallons of radioactive waste at the former plutonium production complex, while the Richland Operations Office heads the remainder of cleanup projects at Hanford. The House bill would set Hanford ORP and Richland spending levels at $1.48 billion and $863 million, respectively, covering both defense and non-defense environmental cleanup.
Also, leaders of the Senate and House Armed Services committees expect by July 27 to finish final negotiations on the fiscal 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, which would set spending limits for the Department of Energy and its cleanup office.
The Senate’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) would allow the Department of Energy to spend $5.63 billion on defense environmental cleanup in fiscal 2019. That matches the department’s request for the budget year, but it is $50 million less than authorized in the House NDAA.
The annual NDAA does not set the budget for federal agencies. Rather, it establishes policies and funding ceilings for appropriators write the annual budget bills.
