Senate Defense Authorization Bill released, outlines EM cuts
Published: Wed, 11/16/11
The Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) cut $356 million in authorizations for Defense Environmental Cleanup under the FY12 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) yesterday.
The SASC passed a version of the FY12 NDAA in June (S. 1253), but this was before new security spending caps were set under the Budget Control Act of 2011 (PL 112-25) in August. As a result, Senate authorizers revisited the FY12 NDAA yesterday to pass a new version of the bill (S. 1867) to cut $21 billion in spending authorizations.
According to a summary from the Committee:
"The bill would reduce funding for environmental cleanup at former atomic weapons production sites by $356 million due to slow program execution; reduce the NNSA nonproliferation program by $168 million due to cost overruns for a pit disassembly facility to produce mixed oxide fuel, which is now developing a new program base line; and for NNSA program management by $45 million due to an excessive rate of growth."
The full Senate could begin debate on the measure later this week.
See the bill text of the new measure (S. 1867) here.
The specific defense authorization cuts are detailed in the table below.
ECA will provide a comparison of authorized and appropriated funding levels in the November ECA Bulletin.
Senate Armed Services Committee FY12 NDAA Cuts
Senate Democratic leaders planned to pass a spending package of three FY12 spending bills (including Energy-Water) by Thanksgiving recess, but those plans are now on hold and may be shelved entirely. As ECA reported yesterday, the Senate began debate of the FY12 Energy-Water Spending Bill (H.R. 2354) Monday, with the intent of adding the FY12 Financial Services and State-Foreign Operations spending bills to create a three-bill spending package. A number of procedural hurdles and controversial amendments, however, significantly slowed progress on the measure.
Reports indicate that Senate leaders may abandon the original plan in favor of a nine-bill spending package. That measure would include all remaining FY12 spending bills not covered by the first three-bill spending package (H.R. 2112) of Agriculture, Commerce-Justice-Science, and Transportation-HUD, which is scheduled for final passage in the House and Senate on Thursday and Friday, respectively.
Will Energy Secretary Steven Chu stay or go? Coral Davenport and Amy Harder, National JournalNovember 15, 2011 When Steven Chu, a Nobel physicist who had lately devoted his career to climate change and clean-energy research, was nominated by President Obama for Energy secretary in December 2008, it seemed like a perfect match. Until then, the Energy Department had actually played very little role in energy policy. Despite its name, the agency's chief mandate is to guard the nation's nuclear arsenal, and to clean up Cold War-era defense nuclear waste. In most years, about two-thirds of its budget goes to nuclear weapons and waste cleanup, while roughly 10 percent to 15 percent goes to energy research.
The idea in 2008 was that Obama would push through a sweeping climate-change law, spurring a transformation of the nation's energy economy: Oil and coal companies would pay the federal government for pollution permits and around $150 billion of that money would be invested over the next decade in clean-energy research, a mission that would be led by the Energy Department, with Chu at the helm.
Three years later, that vision appears to be evaporating. The climate-change bill died in Congress. Clean energy got a one-shot cash infusion of about $30 billion in the economic stimulus law, but that money dries up this year, and Republicans on Capitol Hill want to slash what little federal spending remains on clean energy - and some want to ax the Energy Department altogether. The Energy Department has come under increasing criticism for its management of the clean-energy money - culminating in the dust-up over Solyndra, the bankrupt solar company that got $535 million in federal loan guarantees.
Nuclear power needs to remain central to our energy mix
Christine Todd Whitman November 15, 2011 Today, the U.S. is undergoing a decisive change in how we use and produce energy. A green revolution is seeing wind and solar power grow at unprecedented rates. In the first five months of 2011, wind generation had grown by 35 percent, and solar generation grew by 49 percent over the same time period in 2010. Coal generation, for comparison, saw a 5 percent decrease in that same timespan.
This is being accompanied by the shale gas revolution, in which new the new technologies of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," are used to extract natural gas from shale rock formations. It has caused natural-gas production to jump 15 percent since 2005, and has caused experts to increase estimates of gas reserves to say that the United States has more than a century's worth of reserves.
|
|
