A congressional aide said the House will begin floor debate Tuesday on a $37.4-billion 2017 Energy and Water Appropriations Bill, which includes controversial policy riders unrelated to DOE spending that Democrats have opposed along party lines.
The House’s proposal includes slightly less funding overall than a rider-free companion bill the Senate passed May 12.
The White House has not yet threatened to veto the House bill, H.R. 5055, but did threaten to veto the Senate’s version of the 2017 Energy and Water appropriations package because of a controversial amendment — later removed from the bill — the administration categorized as one of several “problematic ideological provisions that are beyond the scope of funding legislation.”
For legacy waste cleanup managed by DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, the House would provide about $6.2 billion, while the Senate would provide about $6.4 billion. Relative to the House’s bill, the Senate’s bill would increase funding for river corridor and central plateau cleanup at the former Hanford Site plutonium production complex near Richland, Wash., and reduce funding for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, N.M.
For the National Nuclear Security Administration, the House and Senate bills provide essentially the $12.9 billion the White House requested. Both bills deny the White House’s request to cancel the Mixed Oxide (MOX) Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C., but the House bill provides more money for the plant in 2017 — $340 million, compared with $270 million in the Senate proposal.
Meanwhile, while the Senate’s bill would provide some $60 million for the White House’s consent-based siting effort for high-level nuclear waste-disposal, the House bill rejects that effort entirely and instead would provide $170 million to carry out licensing activities for Yucca Mountain. DOE maintains Yucca Mountain, effectively cancelled by the Obama administration in 2010, is unworkable.