In Washington, DOE is focused on multiple budgets.  First - will there be a Government shutdown?  If the FY 17 budget is not adopted by April 28 - there will be a Government shutdown.  The government last shut down in 2013.  Senate Majority leader McConnell yesterday stated he believes it will be completed prior to the deadline -- keep your eye on the issue when Congress returns from vacation Monday of that week.

On March 16, 2017, the new Trump administration released its plans for defense and non-defense spending for Fiscal Year (FY) 2018.  The “skinny budget,” so-called because it includes only top-line funding numbers, looks only at "discretionary" programs in FY18, or only about a third of the total federal budget.  It does not include any proposed changes to mandatory spending or revenue, nor proposals and cost estimates in the years beyond 2018.  The Budget Blueprint proposes a $54 billion increase in defense spending in 2018, offset by targeted cuts elsewhere, including the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

The President’s 2018 Budget requests $28.0 billion for DOE, a $1.7 billion or 5.6 percent decrease from the 2017 annualized Continuing Resolution (CR) level, to $28 billion.  As The Washington Post reported, “…money is redistributed. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) budget would grow 11.3 percent from to $1.4 billion while the rest of the Energy Department’s programs would be cut by 17.9 percent.”[1]

The Budget Blueprint outlines a number of top line priorities for the Department of Energy:

The Administration plans to release a more detailed budget proposal with specific spending levels for DOE’s program offices including Environmental Management, Nuclear Energy, Science, and the National Nuclear Security Administration in May. 

To the cheers of many ECA members who had been fighting in court for the licensing of Yucca Mountain to proceed, DOE is in the process of standing up the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM) to address Yucca Mountain and other elements of an integrated nuclear waste management system, but no official word  is coming out of the Department yet. As a reminder OCRWN was folded in NE in the last Administration and the function will need to be reconstituted - likely with current NE staff.

It is important to remember that the President’s budget is more of a request for Congressional consideration and is not binding since Congress holds the purse strings. After the Administration releases it budget request, Congress holds hearings, adjusts and passes the budget. 

For FY 17 the White House asked Congress to appropriate an additional $30 billion for the Department of Defense and an additional $3 billion for the Department of Homeland Security for FY17.  To help offset the request, the White House proposed enacting non-defense discretionary reductions of $18 billion.   

Under the proposed cuts, the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy could lose $168 million out of the $858 million appropriated under the 2017 CR.  The justification provided for the cut, “Nuclear Energy could absorb a reduction relative to the annualized CR by decreasing funding for later stage R&D in fuel cycle, reactor, and crosscutting technologies.”  Cuts were also proposed to DOE’s Office of Science and ARPA-E, but most significantly to the Offices of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and Fossil Energy.

Major cuts were similarly proposed for the Environmental Protection Agency, most notably for ECA members, to the Brownfields Project Grants, grants to fund state environmental programs and offices, and Superfund Remediation (the two latter are also cut back in the Trump administration’s Budget Blueprint for FY18).