Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Tuesday plans to begin debate on an energy spending bill that stoked controversy among Democrats earlier this year over riders looking to undercut the Environmental Protection Agency and clean energy.
The Kentucky Republican moved Tuesday to push the spending bill forward. The bill would fund the Department of Energy and a number of key water programs, including the EPA’s controversial Waters of the U.S. regulation that has become a prime GOP target. The EPA rule would make ditches and holes on private lands subject to federal enforcement actions and would increase costs for landowners and farmers, critics argue.
In addition to paring funding for the Waters of the U.S. regulation, the bill gives the Energy Department’s renewable energy office a haircut and diverts clean-energy funding toward fossil and nuclear energy programs.
The $35.4 billion energy and water spending bill provides $1.2 billion more than the current fiscal 2015 spending level, but it is more than $600 million less than President Obama had requested in his fiscal 2016 budget request.
Bringing the bill up for debate could stoke another battle with Democrats and the White House after a showdown last month with the administration over a temporary spending measure nearly shut down the government.
The House passed the bill earlier this year along strict party lines and sent it to the Senate, where it has lingered.
