Full Committee Markup of Fiscal Year 2024 Defense and Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Bills

House Appropriations Committee
2359 Rayburn

22/06/2023 at 10:00AM

Full Committee markup of Fiscal Year 2024 Defense and Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies bills.

Consideration of the FY Defense Appropriations bill:

Consideration of the FY Energy and Water Development Appropriations bill:

Text of Legislation

Documents

The Committee recommendation for fiscal year 2024 Department of Defense discretionary funding is $826,448,000,000, which exceeds the President’s budget request by $285,867,000.

From the committee report:

“While the Committee appreciates the budget request’s increase in funding for the Department, it is concerning that the Administration has poorly prioritized funds within the request to include proposals for climate change initiatives.”

“The Committee recommendation includes a reduction of $714,840,000 for unjustified requests that seek to mitigate climate risk but do not improve combat capability or capacity. The Committee is dismayed that the budget request mischaracterizes requirements such as routine infrastructure and utilities upgrades, long-standing statutory compliance activities, combatant commander theater-setting efforts, and multilateral cold weather exercises as mitigating climate risk. This is a disingenuous practice that serves the Administration’s prerogative at the expense of clarity in the Department’s request and the Committee’s ability to perform oversight.”

The Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations bill for fiscal year 2024 totals $52,378,000,000, $1,622,000,000 below fiscal year 2023 and $7,542,590,000 below the budget request.

From the committee report:

“The recommendation rejects the requested increase to assess the potential impact of climate change on aquatic ecosystems.”

Army Corps of Engineers Climate Officers: “The recommendation provides funding equal to the enacted level. Additionally, the recommendation rejects the request to fund a person in each division office with the responsibility of identifying ways to advance resilience to climate change across the nation. No funding is provided for this effort, and the Committee expects the Corps to utilize this funding to prioritize program delivery.”

“The Committee notes the importance of the deployment of advanced reactors to the nation’s ability to regain its leadership in nuclear energy and the contribution of nuclear energy to meeting climate goals.”

Department of Energy Office of Science: “The Department is encouraged to increase its support of activities for academia to perform independent evaluations of climate models using existing data sets and peer-reviewed publications of climate-scale processes in order to determine various models’ ability to reproduce the actual climate.”

“The recommendation provides not less than $39,000,000 to improve the understanding of key cloud, aerosol, precipitation, and radiation processes. The Department is encouraged to coordinate with the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies, as relevant, to support analysis of near-term climate risks and impacts on infrastructure and communities. Within available funds, $3,000,000 is for a pilot program to provide instrumentation for observing marine aerosols, greenhouse gases, and other environmental factors, as relevant, deployed on commercial or other nondedicated ocean vessels and to evaluate a sustained observing network using such platforms. The Committee supports the Department’s efforts to develop a five-year plan for research to support a scientific assessment of near-term climate risk and solar and other climate interventions.”