Work Resumes on Spending Bills after House Speaker Elected

After electing Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) as speaker of the House on a party-line vote of 220-209 last week, the chamber has resumed work to pass spending legislation for fiscal year 2024 that stakes out conservative priorities ahead of negotiations with the Democrat-controlled Senate.

The House is scheduled to vote this week on spending legislation for the Interior Department and Environmental Protection Agency, following its passage of the Department of Energy spending bill last week on a nearly party-line vote of 210-199. Among the floor amendments, the House adopted a provision that would defund the workforce diversity office in the DOE Office of Science, with all but four Republicans voting in favor.

The federal government is currently operating under a stopgap spending bill that expires Nov. 17, and Johnson has said he is willing to use another stopgap to buy more time for negotiations.

Congress is also now weighing the Biden administration’s supplemental funding requests of about $100 billion for security initiatives and about $56 billion for domestic priorities.

The latter request, submitted to Congress last week, includes $2.2 billion for DOE to expand domestic uranium enrichment capabilities and $278 million for DOE to address vulnerabilities in supplies of isotopes for public health, energy, and security applications.

The security request includes $1.2 billion for development of Israel’s Iron Beam missile defense system, $144 million for nuclear nonproliferation initiatives in Ukraine, and $563 million for research, development, test, and evaluation projects in support of Ukraine.