ECA Update: House releases continuing resolution with boost for NNSA Weapons Activities
Published: Tue, 09/11/12
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Continuing Resolution Expected to Sail Through Both Chambers
Katy O'Donnell, National Journal
September 10, 2012
Katy O'Donnell, National Journal
September 10, 2012
The House could vote on a continuing resolution to keep the government funded as early as Thursday, according to aides, knocking out the main priority for the handful of work days Congress has left before the November election. The final text of the stopgap bill, which would keep the government funded through the first quarter of calendar 2013 at a prorated $1.047 trillion annual cap, was expected to be completed as early as Monday.
Congressional leadership reached a deal with the White House on the rate of funding the week before the August recess began, when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced there would be no policy riders in the bill. This Congress has waged bitter battles over nearly every spending bill -- and almost shut down the government in spring 2011 when it came down to the wire on passing over a continuing resolution -- but the stopgap measure is expected to pass both chambers easily, despite its $8 billion increase over current spending levels.
Fiscal 2012 discretionary spending will total about $1.039 trillion, the Congressional Budget Office announced last month, about $4 billion below the year's $1.043 trillion cap. The decrease surprised appropriators, who had expected spending to come in slightly over the cap because of delayed rescissions.
The disparity is largely the result of unanticipated revenue in the Federal Housing Administration and Crime Victims Fund accounts. An increase in loans for mortgage guarantees resulted in the FHA receiving $4.9 billion more than expected, while the Crime Victims Fund posted an increase of $2.7 billion. The windfall was partially offset by the loss of $1.9 billion in advance Veterans Affairs appropriations and the fact that $1.8 billion in fiscal 2012 rescissions couldn't be repeated. The fiscal year ends Sept. 30.
Rumors that defense authorization or the farm bill would be tacked onto the must-pass funding measure circulated last week, much to the chagrin of appropriators.
"It's hard for me to say definitively one way or the other" whether another bill would be attached, said House Appropriations GOP press secretary Jen Hing, "but my chairman has always said we need to do a clean CR."
Because leadership already set the CR at a $1.047 trillion rate, appropriators were given $8 billion in extra funds to allocate, a process they were still sorting through last week. Going into the weekend, leadership hadn't signed off on where the increases would go. The money could simply be divvied up formulaically to grant an across-the-board increase, or funding could go to targeted programs.
The $1.047 trillion rate is consistent with the 2011 Budget Control Act's fiscal 2013 caps. While the House passed a $1.028 trillion cap in the budget authored by Rep. Paul Ryan, Senate appropriators -- both Democrats and Republicans -- approved bills funded at the BCA rate.
The increase over current levels will undoubtedly rankle conservatives heading home to their districts to campaign on cutting federal spending. The fact that disaster aid will be added on top of the cap won't sit well with that faction, either.
But a GOP aide said privately that potential disgruntlement within the ranks wasn't a concern to leadership and appropriators, given the way the disaster-aid fight played out last fall. The insistence of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor that aid be offset by spending cuts elsewhere to pass a CR sparked speculation of a second shutdown threat in one year, mere weeks after Hurricane Irene battered the East Coast and months after one of the worst tornado seasons on record. State and local Republican officials in disaster-stricken states publicly chastised House Republicans, and aid was eventually allocated.
The politics of quibbling over spending is even trickier this time around -- Ryan's selection as GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney's running mate has catapulted Republicans' handling of budget issues into the campaign spotlight, and ads that accuse Republicans of wanting to cut things like disaster relief in order to give the wealthy more tax breaks have already begun circulating.
As of Friday, two issues were still up in the air: where the extra funds would go and the approval of requests for "anomalies," specific technical exemptions that would extend certain programs and activities, such as the permission for the District of Columbia to use its locally collected funds, not covered under a CR.
House Appropriations Chairman Harold Rogers has generally warned that anomalies will only be approved if the alternative would be disastrous. Because it's an election year, the CR will also have to include an anomaly funding campaign security and inauguration expenses.
Bingaman nuclear bill could be vehicle to modify US waste act: NARUC
Platts
September 10, 2012
The national body of public utility commissions proposed Monday that Senator Jeff Bingaman's nuclear waste bill be used as a "legislative vehicle" to modify the federal law governing the disposal of utility spent fuel, incorporating in part a blue ribbon commission's recommendations on how to fix the funding for that program.
"You will not be surprised that our primary interest is on fixing the Nuclear Waste Fund," David Wright, president of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, said in a letter to Bingaman, a New Mexico Democrat and chairman of the Senate Energy Natural Resources Committee, and to Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Murkowski is the senior Republican on the Senate energy committee.
State PUCs have a fiduciary responsibility to ratepayers, and on the nuclear waste issue, that responsibility is centered on the one-tenth of a cent fee the US Department of Energy collects from nuclear utility customers for every kilowatt hour of nuclear-generated electricity sold. In return, DOE was supposed to begin disposing of utility spent fuel in January 1998.
Fourteen years after that contract date, the Nuclear Waste Fund contains roughly $26 billion in waste fee payments and interest, and ratepayers pay about $770 million a year into the fund. But spent fuel remains at nuclear power plants, and many of those plants have had to expand their spent fuel storage capacity, an expense that is passed on to customers.
Recommendations the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future issued in January include moving the nuclear waste program out of DOE to a separate entity, using a consent-based approach to site one or more spent fuel repositories and one or more interim storage facilities, and fixing the Nuclear Waste Fund.
DOE dismantled the proposed repository project at Yucca Mountain in Nevada in 2010 without having an alternative candidate for a spent fuel disposal facility. That same year, Energy Secretary Steven Chu appointed the 15-member BRC to evaluate alternatives to a Yucca Mountain repository and to recommend a new national strategy for dealing with the country's nuclear waste. Bingaman has described his bill as an effort to implement the BRC's recommendations.
Wright said in his letter Monday that NARUC supports the bill's creation of the Nuclear Waste Administration, an independent agency to handle the storage and disposal of spent fuel, but that it is concerned how a spent fuel program would be managed before the agency is created.
The "bill does not heed the clear call for financial reform made by the BRC and it may impede the startup of the new organization," Wright said. He said it could be difficult to attract "top-tier talent because of concerns over its financial stability."
NARUC continues to support the Yucca Mountain project and is a party to a lawsuit that asks a federal appeals court to compel the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to carry out its statutory mandate and resume reviewing DOE's Yucca Mountain repository license application. NRC halted that review in 2011, saying it does not have the funding needed to continue that work.
The court said in August it would wait until Congress sets federal appropriations for fiscal 2013, which begins October 1, before deciding whether to order NRC to resume the licensing review.
NARUC also is a party in a lawsuit after DOE refused to suspend its collection of the fee even though the department had dismantled the Yucca Mountain project. In July, a federal appeals court gave DOE six months to justify its continued collection of the fee.
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