The Senate Appropriations Committee advanced 30-1 Thursday a $43.8 billion draft Energy-Water fiscal 2019 spending measure before entering into a lengthy consideration of how to dispose of 34 metric
tons of weapons-grade plutonium and the development of new low-yield nuclear weapons.
The bill would boost spending for the Energy Department, Army Corps of Engineers and related programs by $566 million compared to fiscal 2018 enacted appropriations and is $7.2 billion more than the Trump administration requested. The House version would fund the same agencies at $44.7 billion.
The committee considered four amendments to the bill and approved two: a manager’s amendment and one from Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-W.Va., to expand the scope and federal agency participation for a study of moving the Appalachian Regional Commission’s headquarters.
Among the amendments not added was a measure, eventually withdrawn, from Sen. Lindsey Graham,
R-S.C., to prevent DOE from abandoning the over-budget, behind-schedule MOX facility in South Carolina that was to convert weapons-grade plutonium into fuel for nuclear power plants.
Graham represented the lone dissenting vote on advancing the bill out of committee. He has expressed opposition to a new DOE strategy for disposing of the 34 metric tons of plutonium at a facility in New
Mexico.
