With the federal appropriations process up in the air, Ohio’s Senate delegation has asked the Senate Appropriations Committee to make sure there is enough funding in the rapidly approaching 2017 fiscal year to continue planned cleanup of the Energy Department’s Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant.
“As the fiscal year ends, it does not appear that Congress will pass the fiscal year 2017 Energy and Water appropriations bill by the end of September,” Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) wrote in a Sept. 1 letter bearing Brown’s letterhead and delivered to the leaders of both the full Senate Appropriations Committee and its energy and water subcommittee. “We ask that the Committee again provide an anomaly that sustains the current level of funding for D & D efforts at Portsmouth by providing an anomaly in any short-term continuing resolution (CR) the Senate considers.”
A continuing resolution is a stopgap spending measure that freezes spending at levels approved in the last annual appropriations bill signed by the president. Congress passes such bills when it is unable to produce a new spending bill by the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.
Federal agencies may not start new projects under a continuing resolution, and any funding needs that would go unmet with a straight extension of the prior year’s appropriation must be addressed by shuffling spending from one project in the stopgap spending bill to another. This system of put-and-takes is known inside the Beltway as an anomaly.
Portsmouth was slated for a funding increase in the fiscal 2017 budget request the White House delivered to Capitol Hill in February, necessitating either a cutback in planned work under a continuing resolution, or an anomaly to keep the work funded. The administration asked for about $255 million, a 14 percent boost above the fiscal 2016 appropriation. In appropriations debate this spring, lawmakers went beyond that, with the Senate approving almost $265 million for Portsmouth and the House approving more than $270 million for the budget year beginning on Oct. 1.
The increases would pay for, among other things, construction of an on-site waste disposal facility needed to store debris generated by planned decontamination and decommissioning of the former uranium enrichment infrastructure at the Pike County site.
Yet Congress is no closer to a final fiscal 2017 budget for DOE today than it was when lawmakers went home for more than a month of summer recess.
The Republican-led Senate in April approved a 2017 Energy and Water Appropriations Bill that includes about $6.2 billion for legacy nuclear waste cleanup administered by the Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management. That is about 2 percent more than than the current appropriation.
The House’s companion energy and water budget bill died on the floor in May. That proposal included under $6.1 billion for DOE legacy waste cleanup, or about 1 percent less than in 2016.
