The Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commission will remain frozen at fiscal 2017 spending levels through at least late March, under the stopgap spending bill passed by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump on Friday morning after an overnight government shutdown — the second of fiscal 2018.
The bill is the fifth continuing resolution of the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. While it includes important financial aid for the Defense Department and many other government programs, DOE nuclear cleanup and weapons programs got no special treatment.
Under the bill, DOE and the independent Nuclear Regulatory Commission will be funded at the annualized equivalent of their 2017 budgets through March 23 — about halfway through fiscal 2018. That is about $1 billion for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission instead of the roughly $950 million requested; roughly $13 billion instead of $14 billion as requested for DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration; about $6.4 billion for the department’s Office of Environmental Management instead of the $6.5 billion requested.
Importantly, the bill eliminated pending budget cuts that would have hurt DOE in fiscal years 2019 and 2020, taking some of the pressure off Congress as it attempts to pass a permanent 2018 budget for the department. However, the ongoing debate over illegal immigration that last month precipitated the first government shutdown of fiscal 2018 and prompted many Democrats to oppose Friday’s continuing resolution still hangs over Capitol Hill.
On top of that, the White House is expected to release its 2019 budget request Monday, piling still more work on Congress’ plate at a time when federal agencies outside the Pentagon still do not have a permanent budget. Among other things, federal agencies may not begin new work under continuing resolutions.
As with the previous temporary measures, the latest continuing resolution provides no funding for DOE or the NRC to resume the licensing process for the long-planned nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The Obama administration stopped work on Yucca Mountain in 2010, but the Trump administration for the current budget year requested $120 million for DOE and $30 million for the NRC to restart licensing.
There has been no formal word from Washington on whether Yucca will be in the White House’s next budget plan. Nuclear Infrastructure Council Executive Director David Blee last week said the common wisdom was that the administration would request an amount similar to what it sought for fiscal 2018.
While it did not address nuclear waste issues specifically, the latest continuing resolution does do away with the 2020 deadline for new nuclear power plants to get a tax credit, Politico reported.
The compromise budget, unveiled Wednesday to bipartisan applause, provided a permanent 2018 budget only for the Defense Department. By Thursday, the bill had drawn the ire of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who filibustered the measure long enough to close the government for a few hours Friday morning after the previous continuing resolution expired.
House Democrats and Republican fiscal hawks in the chamber also groused about the bill. Many House Democrats still oppose any government budget bill that does not include legal protections for young people called Dreamers who were brought into the country illegally. Some members of the House GOP caucus continue to object to increased government spending.
Increased government spending, in the end, attracted enough bipartisan support to pass the bill.
With the new budget deal, Congress eliminated the dreaded “sequestration” cuts passed into law as part of the 2011 Budget Control Act. That allows lawmakers to increase spending on military and domestic programs, including DOE. As a condition of supporting the bill, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) promised Senate Democrats a chance to legislate protections for Dreamers outside the confines of an appropriations bill.
The federal government shut down for a weekend and a day in mid-January after Senate Democrats refused to vote for a stopgap spending bill that did not include protections for the Dreamers.
