Contents

• Most Recent Developments
• Overview
• The Budget Control Act and Energy and Water Development Appropriations for FY2013 and FY2014

Summary

The Energy and Water Development appropriations bill provides funding for civil works projects of the Army Corps of Engineers (Corps), for the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) and the Department of Energy (DOE), and for a number of independent agencies.

FY2013 Energy and Water Development appropriations were considered in the context of the Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA, P.L. 112-25), which established discretionary spending limits for FY2012-FY2021. On March 26, 2013, the President signed H.R. 933, the FY2013 Defense and Military Construction, and Veterans Affairs, Full Year Continuing Appropriations Act (P.L. 113-6). The act funds Energy and Water Development accounts at the FY2012 enacted level for the rest of FY2013, with some exceptions. However, under BCA, an automatic spending reduction process, consisting of a combination of sequestration and lower discretionary spending caps, went into effect March 1, 2013. The effect of these reductions on the budgetary resources that will ultimately be available to an agency at the account level remains unclear until further guidance is provided by OMB as to how these reductions should be applied.

President Obama's FY2014 budget request for Energy and Water Development was released in April 2013.

For FY2014, as in previous years, the level of overall spending will be a major issue. On March 21, 2013, the House passed H.Con.Res. 25, setting FY2014 spending at $2.77 trillion. On March 23, the Senate passed S.Con.Res. 8, with a spending level for FY2014 of $2.96 trillion. Allocations for individual appropriations bills have not yet been set by the Appropriations Committees.

In addition to overall funding levels, issues specific to Energy and Water Development programs include

• the distribution of appropriations for Corps (Title I) and Reclamation (Title II) projects that have historically received congressional appropriations above Administration requests;
• alternatives to the proposed national nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, NV, which the Administration has abandoned (Title III: Nuclear Waste Disposal); and
• proposed FY2014 spending levels for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) programs (Title III) that are more than 50% higher in the Administration's request than the amount appropriated for FY2012.

This report is a preliminary summary of funding levels requested by the Administration for FY2014. For detailed discussion of issues involved in individual programs, see CRS Report R42498, Energy and Water Development: FY2013 Appropriations.

Most Recent Developments

President Obama's FY2014 budget request for Energy and Water Development was released in April 2013. The request totaled $34.9 billion.

Overview

The Energy and Water Development bill includes funding for civil works projects of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps), the Department of the Interior's Central Utah Project (CUP) and Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation), the Department of Energy (DOE), and a number of independent agencies, including the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC).

The Budget Control Act and Energy and Water Development Appropriations for FY2013 and FY2014

FY2013 discretionary appropriations were considered in the context of the Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA, P.L. 112-25), which established discretionary spending limits for FY2012-FY2021. The BCA also tasked a Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction to develop a federal deficit reduction plan for Congress and the President to enact by January 15, 2012. Because deficit reduction legislation was not enacted by that date, an automatic spending reduction process established by the BCA was triggered; this process consists of a combination of sequestration and lower discretionary spending caps, initially scheduled to begin on January 2, 2013. The "joint committee" sequestration process for FY2013 requires the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to implement across-the-board spending cuts at the account and program level to achieve equal budget reductions from both defense and nondefense funding at a percentage to be determined, under terms specified in the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985 (BBEDCA, Title II of P.L. 99-177, 2 U.S.C. 900-922), as amended by the BCA. For further information on the Budget Control Act, see CRS Report R41965, The Budget Control Act of 2011, by [author name scrubbed], [author name scrubbed], and [author name scrubbed].

The American Taxpayer Relief Act (ATRA, P.L. 112-240), enacted on January 2, 2013, made a number of significant changes to the procedures in the BCA that will take place during FY2013. First, the date for the joint committee sequester to be implemented was delayed for two months, until March 1, 2013. Second, the dollar amount of the joint committee sequester was reduced by $24 billion. Third, the statutory caps on discretionary spending for FY2013 and FY2014 were lowered. For further information on the changes to BCA procedures made by ATRA, see CRS Report R42949, The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012: Modifications to the Budget Enforcement Procedures in the Budget Control Act, by [author name scrubbed]

Pursuant to the BCA, as amended by ATRA, President Obama ordered that the joint committee sequester be implemented on March 1, 2013.¹ The accompanying OMB report indicated a dollar amount of budget authority to be canceled to each account containing non-exempt funds.² The sequester will ultimately be applied at the program, project, and activity (PPA) level within each account.³ Because the sequester was implemented at the time that a temporary continuing resolution was in force, the reductions were calculated on an annualized basis and will be apportioned throughout the remainder of the fiscal year.⁴ Although full year FY2013 funding has been enacted, the effect of these reductions on the budgetary resources that will ultimately be available to an agency at either the account or PPA level remains unclear until further guidance is provided by OMB as to how these reductions should be applied.

Table 1 includes budget totals for energy and water development appropriations enacted for FY2007 to FY2014.

Table 2 lists totals for each of the bill's four titles.

The following tables present the requested FY2014 funding for the major programs included in the Energy and Water Development appropriations bills. Because of the uncertainty involved in the sequestration of FY2013 funding, the requested amounts are compared to the funding appropriated for FY2012.

The present report is a preliminary survey of the proposed FY2014 Energy and Water Development appropriations. A more comprehensive report on the FY2014 appropriation will follow. For a detailed description of these programs, see the CRS Report R42498, Energy and Water Development: FY2013 Appropriations.

Author Contact Information

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Footnotes