Timeline and Funding Established for House Energy and Water Appropriations Bill
In March, the White House released the President’s Budget for Fiscal Year 2025. Now, the House is beginning its markup of the Energy and Water Development, and Related Agencies Subcommittee on Appropriations.
Last Friday, we learned that the House allocated $59.2 billion to the Energy and Water Subcommittee, which is about $1.1 billion more than FY2024. $34.2 billion would be allocated to defense funding (EM Defense, NNSA, etc), while $24.9 billion would be allocated to non-defense funding (EM non-defense, etc). These bills provide the funding for cleanup activities at every cleanup site in the country, NNSA mission, and other DOE missions.
This timeline demonstrates the budget process, although the timeline of events for this year have been delayed. The next step for the appropriations bill will be to send it to subcommittee markup, scheduled for June 28. Congressman Fleischman is chair of the House Energy and Water Development Appropriations subcommittee, of which Congressman Newhouse is a member. It will be considered by the full committee on July 9.
House appropriators hope to finish the markups for all bills by the end of July.
Afterwards, the bills must be passed by the House before they can make their way into a combined bill that must be passed by both houses. The Senate has yet to announce the allocations and mark-up schedules for its versions of the appropriations bills.
EM conducts budget deliberations amongst the sites, DOE Management, CFO, and OMB after receiving budget requests and site recommendations. In August, CFO/EM is scheduled to prepare a budget to send to OMB.
According to schedule, by the September 30 deadline, if any unfinished appropriations remain, they will be combined into a continuing resolution (CR) for potential passage after the elections.
You can learn more about energy appropriations and other budget issues on our website.
In related news, the Senate Strategic Armed Forces Committee will hold a Defense Authorization Hearing on energy issues on May 22. Testimony will be given by the DOE and DOD as a part of the review of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for the FY25 appropriations. NNSA and EM are both participating in the meeting. Watch the live hearing here.
The timeline above displays the NDAA process. This hearing is important to informing the committee on what should constitute defense funding and by what processes and policies they should be authorized for the markup process. This directly affects the amount of money federal agencies can spend for environmental cleanup of defense sites and other nuclear activities. Authorization is the amount of money agencies are authorized to spend; appropriations are the amounts of money agencies and departments are given to spend. The Senate will conduct further hearings before beginning the mark-up process.
The House will begin conducting its markup later this Wednesday. In both chambers, once markup is finished the NDAA is voted out of committee, and will be sent to be heard on the floor. If one chamber passes its version of the NDAA first, it will go to the other for consideration. A conference committee between both chambers will then be established to work out differences between the House and Senate versions. Afterwards, the bill is presented to the President to either be passed or vetoed. Typically in a Presidential election year both parties are motivated to pass the NDAA (national defense) prior to Congress recessing for elections, but many times it passes during a lame duck Congress after the November elections.
ECA staff will continue to monitor progress on FY2025 Appropriations and Authorization and release summaries throughout.