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Congressional Appropriations Staff Works to Settle U.S. Nuclear Weapons Funding Issues By David Ruppe WASHINGTON — U.S. congressional appropriations staffers are working to settle a House-Senate dispute over the Bush administration’s nuclear weapons agenda, as they scramble to write legislation for a giant fiscal 2005 omnibus appropriations bill. Congress failed to pass appropriations legislation for the Energy Department and most other agencies prior to Oct. 1, the end of fiscal year 2004. Since then much of the government has been operating under a continuing resolution and the Energy Department had appeared likely to do so for the entire fiscal year. Now, appropriations staffers from the House and Senate are hoping to complete work in about a day that usually takes weeks or months, including agreeing to language that includes or excludes requested money for controversial weapons research and development. The House in June passed a fiscal 2005 Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill that denied the administration’s requests for nuclear weapons research and development programs — including $27.6 million for the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator study and $9 million for other nuclear weapons “advanced concepts” work — as well as $29.8 million for constructing a new nuclear weapons pit production facility (see GSN, June 28). The omissions were pressed by Representative Dave Hobson (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, who said the proposed programs were “very provocative” internationally and could undermine U.S. nonproliferation efforts (see GSN, Aug. 12). Hobson’s counterpart in the Senate, Senator Pete Domenici (R-N.M.), is understood to favor all of those appropriations requested by the administration, but his committee never passed an appropriations bill. The apparent holdup was over funding for Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, where the United States is building a long-term nuclear waste storage site. News organizations reported today that that issue was settled and that $577 million, the same amount approved for fiscal 2004, was agreed upon to continue preparing the site. The White House had requested $880 million (see GSN, June 10). Energy and Water legislation could be finished tonight or early tomorrow, according to Hobson’s spokeswoman, Sara Perkins. “The staff members have just been busting their humps to get this done,” she said.
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