The White House late last week issued a Congressionally required report outlining just how much of an impact the looming funding cuts set to occur in early 2013 known as sequestration will have on federal programs, including those overseen by the National Nuclear Security Administration and the Department of Energy’s Office of Environmental Management. According to the report, the NNSA’s weapons activities would be cut by 9.4 percent, or $678 million based largely on current funding levels. The NNSA’s nonproliferation activities would also be cut by 9.4 percent, or $216 million. For EM, defense environmental cleanup funding, which largely covers DOE’s main cleanup sites, would be cut by 9.4 percent, or $472 million. Non-defense environmental cleanup funding and uranium enrichment D&D funding would each be cut by 8.2 percent, or $19 million and $39 million, respectively.
The sequestration process would involve a total of $1.2 trillion in funding cuts, equally divided between defense and non-defense funding, over 10 years unless Congress passes deficit reduction legislation targeting the same amount before Jan. 2, 2013. “The specter of harmful across-the-board cuts to defense and non-defense programs was intended to drive both sides to compromise. The sequestration itself was never intended to be implemented. The Administration strongly believes that sequestration is bad policy, and that Congress can and should take action to avoid it by passing a comprehensive and balanced deficit reduction package,” the report says, adding, “As the Administration has made clear, no amount of planning can mitigate the effect of these cuts. Sequestration is a blunt and indiscriminate instrument. It is not the responsible way for our nation to achieve deficit reduction.” The full report can
be found here.
