Though no initiatives appear to have been started, Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) hopes lawmakers will work to free up some $1.6 billion locked up in an essentially inactive account created 25 years ago to support activities of the then-newly initiated United States Enrichment Corp., according to Coats’ press secretary. The senator highlighted the account on Monday in his weekly government “Waste of the Week” speech on the Senate floor, after he read an April Government Accountability Office report that illuminated the fund’s apparently dormant existence. “Though the report indicates past legislative action regarding this fund, Senator Coats is not aware of any current legislative initiatives,” Coats spokeswoman Kristine Michalson said on Tuesday. “He hopes his effort to draw attention to it will trigger action.”
The GAO’s “2015 Annual Report: Additional Opportunities to Reduce Fragmentation, Overlap, and Duplication and Achieve Other Financial Benefits" recommended Congress streamline several accounts that congressional auditors deemed ineffective for reasons ranging from being outdated to a lack of necessity. The report suggested lawmakers consider rescinding the fund, as GAO said it had already achieved its purposes of supporting environmental cleanup associated with the disposition of depleted uranium and expenses of USEC privatization. The Energy Policy Act of 1992 created USEC to provide more privatized uranium enrichment services for the U.S. government and the utilities that operate U.S. power plants, and it also started the companion USEC Fund. But USEC transitioned to private ownership in 1996, and since late 2014 has operated under the new name of Centrus Energy.
The report notes that the House-passed version of the fiscal 2015 Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act included language to rescind the USEC Fund, which the final “crominbus” appropriations bill for the budget year omitted. The USEC Fund sits as a revolving U.S. Treasury fund to carry out USEC objectives.
Michalson added that Coats agrees with GAO’s recommendation for rescinding the fund. “[T]here is a pot of money sitting in the USEC Fund that has no federally authorized use,” Coats said in a statement. “This is basically a zombie fund – its life should be over and yet it lives on.”