DOE Appropriations Bill Passes House Floor

On July 12, the House voted to pass H.R. 1905, the Energy and Water Development Appropriations bill for FY 1996. This bill provides funding for the Department of Energy, the Bureau of Reclamation, the Corps of Engineers, and other programs.

In the portion of the bill relating to DOE, very few changes were made on the House floor to the version passed by the House Appropriations Committee on June 20. The Appropriations Committee provided a total of $14.76 billion for DOE, 11.3 percent less than the request of $16.63 billion, and 6.0 percent less than current FY 1995 funding of $15.70 billion. As reported in FYIs #85 and 86, the committee report makes the following recommendations (unchanged by the House floor vote):

Within High Energy Physics, the bill provides $6 million to start preparations for working with the Europeans on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

Three amendments were passed on the House floor that affect DOE science funding. Rep. Mike Ward (D-KY) offered an amendment to strike committee report language that earmarked $1.0 million within DOE’s Energy Supply, Research and Development Activities for “research on the potential energy applications of sonoluminescence.” The amendment passed 276-141, deleting the earmark for sonoluminescence.

Rep. Scott Klug (R-WI) succeeded in passing two amendments: one that attempts to terminate the Gas Turbine Modular Helium Reactor program, and one to restore $45 million for the Solar Technology Transfer program.

Among amendments that were rejected, Rep. Harold Volkmer (D-MO) offered one to eliminate $8.0 million designated for conceptual design of the spallation neutron source, to be built at Oak Ridge as a less-expensive replacement for the Advanced Neutron Source. This amendment failed, 148-275.

Rep. Robert Andrews (D-NJ) was expected to offer an amendment cutting funding for DOE general science and energy research. However, Andrews was reportedly absent and did not offer the amendment.

The Chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, John Myers (R-IN), in describing the bill on the House floor, said: “The bill effects serious reductions throughout the Department of Energy. Unneeded bureaucracy is cut from the budget, while essential and necessary activities of the Federal Government are preserved. General science and research activities are preserved within funding constraints, while applied research and commercialization activities- especially those for which private industry investment is more appropriate- are eliminated or dramatically reduced.... The appropriation for general science is $991 million, a $7 million increase over last year’s level.”

House Science Committee Chairman Robert Walker (R-PA) supported the bill, stating, “The gentleman from Indiana [Mr. Myers] has, to the extent possible within his subcommittee’s 602(b) allocation, tracked the energy research and development priorities of the Committee on Science as outlined in the authorization bills.... This is a bill that does a lot in terms of basic energy sciences and in high energy and nuclear physics science. What we have here is a commitment to the idea that we ought to be doing basic research in this country, that there is an underlying need to develop those new knowledge bases that this country will depend upon in years ahead.”

This bill will now be considered by the Senate Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee.