The U.S. Energy Department’s Office of Environmental Management, and the rest of the federal government, would keep operating beyond the end of fiscal 2019 on Monday under a stopgap spending bill awaiting President Donald Trump’s signature at deadline Friday for Weapons Complex Monitor.
The Senate voted 82-15 on Thursday to pass the continuing resolution, with Republicans supplying the no votes. The House last week passed its corresponding measure, which extends 2019 spending levels through Nov. 21. The move buys Congress more time to overcome a party line fight over whether to fund Trump’s southern-border wall, and also cut a deal over the budget for fiscal 2020, which starts Oct. 1.
National news outlets predicted Trump would sign the bill to stave off a government shutdown for at least seven weeks.
The House of Representatives in June approved its $47 billion fiscal 2020 energy and water development bill, funding DOE, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and other agencies, as part of a “minibus” spending package. At deadline, the full Senate had yet to set a vote on the $49-billion energy and water bill the Senate Appropriations Committee approved two weeks ago.
The continuing resolution would temporarily keep funding for the DOE Office of Environmental Management, which oversees remediation of 16 Cold War and Manhattan Project nuclear-weapon sites, at an annualized level of nearly $7.2 billion.
That is roughly equal to the amount the full House of Representatives approved for the coming year. However, it is less than the more than $7.4 billion recommendation passed out of the Senate Appropriations Committee on Sept. 12. Any of those would be well above the $6.5 billion proposed by the White House in March for the nuclear cleanup office.
Under the Senate Appropriations proposal, the Office of Environmental Management would receive over $6.2 billion for defense environmental cleanup, compared to the $6 billion enacted level for fiscal 2019, the $6 billion in the House bill, and the $5.5 billion sought by the administration.
The Uranium Enrichment Decontamination and Decommissioning Fund would get $906 million under the Senate bill, compared to the $841 million in fiscal 2019, the $873 million passed by the House and the $715 million White House request. Senate Appropriations called for $318 million in non-defense environmental cleanup, up from $310 million in fiscal 2019, $308 million in the House version and the $248 million sought by the administration.
Meanwhile, conferees from the House and the Senate must still hammer out a compromise between their differing versions of the fiscal 2020 National Defense Authorization Act. Both versions of the defense policy bill would authorize roughly $5.5 billion in defense environmental cleanup money for the Department of Energy.
The House version of the fiscal 2020 NDAA, passed in July, would also prevent DOE from applying any “reclassification” of high-level radioactive waste to material held in Washington state. The Energy Department said in June that some less-dangerous radioactive waste from reprocessing spent nuclear fuel need not be treated as high-level, and could sent to sites for low-level waste.
The high-level waste amendment came from Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), who represents part of Washington state, where Hanford has some of that HLW that could be reclassified. The Energy Department has not been releasing data on how much waste might be affected by its planned change.
Reporter Dan Leone contributed to this article.