Energy and Water Development: FY2014 Appropriations, Preliminary Tables
Released: 2013-05-09T00:00:00

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. The accompanying OMB report indicated a dollar amount of budget authority to be canceled to each account containing non-exempt funds. The sequester will ultimately be applied at the program, project, and activity (PPA) level within each account. 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. 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 .