Lab Budgets: The Senate Strikes Back
Written by John FleckTuesday, 26 June 2007
The Senate Energy and Water Appropriations Bill ...
... appears to strike back hard at cuts proposed by the House of Representatives, according to a summary just released by Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M. The subcommittee is meeting as we speak, and our man in Washington, Michael Coleman, is there. In the meantime, we don't have the full report yet, so we've just got Pete's numbers to work with at this point. Here's what they say:
The House wanted to cut $396 million next year, as compared to this year's nuclear weapons budget. The Senate mark is $216 million above this year's spending.
The House wants to kill the Reliable Replacement Warhead. The Senate wants to fund it, to the tune of $66 million.
The CMR replacement building (the big plutonium lab up at Los Alamos) is dead in the House mark, funded in the Senate mark. The next-gen "consolidated plutonium center" is dead in both places. Stick a fork in it.
I'm still sorting through some of the details in the Domenici statement and, as I said, we don't have the full report yet (devil/details etc.). I'll have more later this afternoon, and Mike and I will have a full report in the newspaper that lands on your driveway tomorrow morning.
17 comments:
I would like some information.
If the house numbers are low and the Senate's are higher, but the budget becomes a continuing resolution into sometime next year (I think that this has happened every year since about 1977), is the de facto budget number that can be spent (until sometime next year) the House's low number.
If this is correct, how will the Lab cover the shortfall?
Thanks,
Go Pete. Go Jeff.
You're the financial planning expert, Eric. You tell us.
Bozo.
It won't.
The continuing resolution (when voted on by the House and Senate and signed by the President) is at the same funding level as last year. Here's what I found:
Federal budget procedure
If Congress fails to pass a funding bill, or the President fails to sign it into law, non-essential functions of the government will cease, as they are no longer allowed by law to spend money. In order to prevent the interruption of government services, Congress will often pass a continuing resolution. This authorizes government agencies to fund their agencies at the current level until either the resolution expires, or an appropriations bill is passed. A continuing resolution must be passed by both houses of Congress and signed into law by the President.
With a continuing resolution, you can spend at the same rate as you did during the same time period of last year.
Hang on to your butt! The ride is just beginning.
No it's not. What the Democrats started, the Republicans will finish. Stupak, Dingell, and Hobson got to thump their chests and act tough, and now the Republicans will simply override them.
LANL will get its money, and then it will be business as usual, again. Woopee.
Eric -
There's no set rule for how CR's are carried out. The Senate and House negotiate at the time whether it will be, for example, spending at previous year levels, or spending at the lowest of the House or Senate mark, or whatever. It's specified, sometimes in awkward detail, in the actual CR (i.e., exceptions can be made, tweaks, etc.) I've seen it done a number of ways in my years of covering the federal budget. (And FYI, I called up one of the congressional staffers who works on these issues and confirmed this explanation.)
Even with Domenici's numbers we (LANL) is still low on funding, but, the writing is on the wall, vacate the premisies...it's all over but the crying....next year will be even worse...
Swoon over St. Pete's budget figures as you wish, but it's highly doubtful that the House will bow to the Senate's numbers. The best we'll see next year will be a CR with some major cuts for LANL's funding. The House seems unified with both Democrats and Republicans out to severely gut LANL's budget. They will likely get at least some of the cuts through, one way or another.
Even St. Pete has been telling us now for some time that the nuclear weapon budgets are going to start shrinking in the next few years. That's the reality that the labs have to eventually face.
9:26 Goodbye, we probably won't miss you or your crying. Times might be tough, but we're not done!
11:07 Your ARE done, (just don't know it yet....
Thanks for answering my questions.
Cheers,
6:44 Aren't you the witty one?! 'Course most of us don't confuse wits and brains.
The lab isn't going away in FY08. Many if not all contributors will still be able to accomplish something here. If we can manage to get control of things and stay out of the media, we might actully get back on track. My evidence is at least as good as most of the doom and gloom BS that comes from folks like you.
8:38PM seems to believe the world will always bend to the Labs whims. No need to change, We,re just misunderstood. I'm not so sure anymore.
From 8:38 Exactly the opposite. I think there are a lot of talented people here with something to contribute. In another part of this blog there is a pretty healthy discussion about teamwork. Some good points made there.
I do think that it is not too late to save the lab. I also think that it will require acceptance of change, lots of cooperation, and even more hard work. Willing to join us (the silent majority)?
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