A bill that would support the development of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada while cutting funding for efficiency and renewable energy research and development cleared the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Appropriations on May 16.
The GOP-controlled committee voted 29-20 in favor of the fiscal-year 2019 energy and water development and related agencies appropriations bill. Support for the legislation was divided largely along party lines, with most Democrats opposed to the bill's proposed spending cuts for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, or EERE, and the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, known as ARPA-E.
Democrats were also against several policy riders in the bill, including one to repeal the Obama administration's Clean Water Rule defining waters subject to federal regulation.
"These riders make moving our bill in a bipartisan manner difficult and I strongly object to their inclusion," said U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, ranking member of the Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, And Related Agencies.
The committee rejected an amendment from Kaptur that would have removed several of the bill's policy riders and voted down another amendment from Rep. Matt Cartwright, D-Pa., that sought to restore the bill's funding for EERE and ARPA-E to fiscal-year 2018 levels. Subcommittee Chairman Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, said the proposed cuts to EERE and ARPA-E were necessary to provide funding increases in other parts of the bill and that the legislation would give more money for those items than President Donald Trump sought in his fiscal-year 2019 budget request.
The spending bill, which the committee released May 6, sought $44.7 billion for energy and water development and related federal agencies in fiscal year 2019, up $1.5 billion from prior-year enacted levels and $8.17 billion above Trump's request. The legislation proposed $267 million for the stalled Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, up $100 million from the White House's request, and ignored Trump's calls to defund the DOE's Title 17 innovative technology loan guarantee program and ARPA-E.
The bill would also lift funding for the DOE's fossil and nuclear energy research and development and set aside $146 million for the agency's new Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response up $50 million from last year after accounting for the structural changes. But support for EERE would decline by $243 million year-over-year to $2.08 billion, while ARPA-E would receive $28 million less at $325 million.
The House must eventually reconcile its spending legislation with the U.S. Senate's energy appropriations bill, which the upper chamber has yet to release.
