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Members of the House and Senate began their annual summer recess on August 1 without voting on an FY15 Interior-Environment spending bill that provides funding for EPA and the Drinking Water and Clean Water State Revolving Funds (SRFs).  With lawmakers not scheduled to return to Washington until after Labor Day, and with the new fiscal year set to begin on October 1, Congress is expected to abandon work on the stand-alone spending bill and instead fold the EPA measure into a larger FY15 appropriations package.

The House GOP’s FY15 Interior-Environment spending bill – which won Appropriations Committee approval in July but never made it to the House floor – would have provided the DWSRF with $757 million next year while giving the CWSRF $1.018 billion – representing a cut of more than $581 million below the programs’ combined current funding levels.  The House proposal also would have extended “Buy American” requirements for iron and steel products used on DWSRF projects, and omitted funding for the newly authorized “Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act” (WIFIA).

The SRFs would fare better under an Interior-Environment spending proposal released by the Senate Appropriations Committee on August 1.  While the Senate bill mirrored the House proposal in including “Buy American” requirements for the SRFs and omitting WIFIA funding, the draft measure would provide the DWSRF and the CWSRF with $907 million and $1.4 billion, respectively – nearly equal to each program’s current funding level.  Senate appropriators also used the committee report accompanying the bill to criticize the White House for proposing “drastic reductions to State Revolving Fund programs … even though similar proposals have been rejected by the Committees on Appropriations in prior fiscal years.”

Upon returning to Washington in September lawmakers are expected to begin work on a continuing resolution that will temporarily extend current spending levels beyond the October 1 onset of the new fiscal year.  Appropriators will then begin to negotiate either one or several omnibus spending bills, which will combine multiple individual appropriations proposals into larger packages.  These larger bills will give lawmakers more trading options when negotiating controversial provisions, and could reduce the amount of floor time necessary to pass all the necessary legislation before Congress again departs for the campaign trail this fall.

While no FY15 spending bills have yet become law, to date members of the House of Representatives have passed versions of 7 of the 12 annual bills through the chamber.  The U.S. Senate, conversely, has not approved any FY15 appropriations measures.