House and Senate appropriators on Sunday agreed to extend 2023 budgets for federal agencies for about another month-and-a-half, into March, while they continue work on permanent budget bills for the 2024 fiscal year, now in its second quarter.
Under the latest continuing resolution, the third such stopgap of the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, the Department of Energy, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board and other agencies will now keep their 2023 budgets through March 1. The Pentagon and other agencies will remain funded through March 8.
Funding for DoE and the other nuclear agencies will run out on Friday unless Congress and the White House can approve the new stopgap.
The bill, on its third page, gives the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) special permission to exceed 2023 spending levels, up to the agency’s requested level of $760 million, to keep construction workers on the job at the Uranium Processing Facility: the next-generation factory for nuclear-weapon secondary stages that has again run over budget and behind schedule.
Continuing resolutions usually require that agencies strictly follow their prior-year budgets. Exceptions, also called anomalies, are rare, and no other defense- or civilian nuclear programs received one in the latest stopgap bill.
The new continuing resolution must still pass both chambers of Congress. A group of far-right Republicans in the House, who have derailed the appropriations process multiple times in the 2023 and 2024 fiscal years, generally oppose short-term and omnibus spending bills that fund government agencies with one bill instead of the nominal 12.
Several of these lawmakers have said publicly that they will vote against any federal spending not appropriated by the 12 bills. If most or all Democrats in the House support the bill, the far-right holdouts would not be able to defeat the measure without securing many defections from the rest of their conference.
To keep DoE open beyond March 1, lawmakers are trying to hammer out a spending agreement for the rest of fiscal year 2024, which runs through Sept. 30. Those bills would adhere to the deal announced Jan. 7 by Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Majority Leader Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.).
This story first appeared in Defense Daily affiliate publication Weapons Complex Morning Briefing.