The House of Representatives was scheduled to write the rules of debate on Monday for the continuing resolution that will fund the government for the early part of fiscal year 2021, which begins in 10 days.
The House had not yet unveiled the text of its bill at deadline Monday for Weapons Complex Morning Briefing, although media have for weeks reported that the bill will extend 2020 funding levels at least until December.
That would leave legacy nuclear-weapons cleanup managed by the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) funded well above the 2021 request, while active nuclear weapons programs at DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) would get billions of dollars less than the White House says they need for the coming fiscal year.
That would leave EM funded at the annualized equivalent of about $7.45 billion, which is almost $1.3 billion more than the Donald Trump administration requested for 2021. Last year, Congress approved an EM budget that was around $1 billion more than the request, and Trump eventually signed the appropriation into law.
The NNSA, on the other hand, would take a big hit under the short term continuing resolution. The semiautonomous nuclear weapons agency would see its funding held at just over $16.5 billion in a year when the White House has sought nearly $20 billion to keep a portfolio of major nuclear weapons refurbishments on track. Last week, a senior Pentagon official warned that even the $18 billion the House has approved for the NNSA in 2021 would delay the agency’s effort to modernize the B61 nuclear gravity bomb.
The Senate wrote no 2021 spending bills this year.
Also under a clean continuing resolution, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which regulates civilian nuclear power plants and the waste they generate, would remain funded at the annualized level of about $855 million, which is some $10 million below the 2021 request.
The Army Corps of Engineers’ Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP) would be funded at the equivalent of $200 million a year, which is $60 million more than requested for 2021. The Trump administration has sought to transfer that nuclear-waste cleanup program into the Department of Energy, but Congress has not gone along with the plan.
