Another key vote is scheduled today in the Senate, this time to end debate on the legislative language for the short-term spending bill that will keep the Energy Department and the rest of the federal government funded at fiscal 2016-equivalent levels until Dec. 9.
The next federal budget year begins Saturday, but the appropriations process stalled again in Congress. To avert a government shutdown, Congress must pass the so-called continuing resolution and get it to President Barack Obama for his signature before midnight Friday. If it does, the Energy Department would be funded at an annualized rate of about $29.5 billion for the two months the bill covers.
DOE’s Office of Environmental Management, which manages cleanup of nuclear waste from the Cold War arms race, would be funded at the annual equivalent of about $6.1 billion for those two months: about 1 percent more than the White House requested for fiscal 2017. Only uranium-enrichment cleanup at EM’s Portsmouth and Paducah sites were explicitly protected from funding downturns in the stopgap bill, according to bill language released last week.
Meanwhile, DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration, which manages nuclear weapons production for the Pentagon, would be funded under the continuing resolution at an annualized $12.5 billion. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which regulates commercial nuclear power plants and their associated waste streams, would be funded at an annualized rate of just over $1 billion: some 2 percent more than the 2017 request.
