The Senate this week will begin to hash out details of 2012 spending for energy, water and agriculture agencies and programs, assembling companions to House-passed legislation during markups by a subcommittee and full committee of Senate appropriators.

The Energy and Water Subcommittee meets at 2 p.m. today to mark up the 2012 Energy and Water Development Appropriations bill, which funds the Energy Department, Army Corps of Engineers and water programs run by the Interior Department.

The full Appropriations Committee will then take up the energy and water bill tomorrow as well as a 2012 Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies spending package, among other items.

Senate Appropriations Committee staff would not divulge details of the spending packages in advance of the meetings.

On the energy and water front, Democrats in control of the committee are expected to press for higher funding and put forward a bill free of the controversial, anti-environmental policy riders than were included in the GOP-authored companion bill that the House passed 219-196 earlier this summer (Greenwire, July 15).

GOP authors of the House bill (H.R. 2354) boasted that the $30.6 billion measure -- which was $5.9 billion smaller than what President Obama had sought -- shrank spending for the two agencies to nearly 2006 levels, while providing more than $1 billion in emergency money for the Army Corps to address Mississippi River and Missouri River flooding disasters.

House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) called the bill "proof that we can make common-sense spending reductions without damaging or impairing the programs that help keep our country safe and our citizens at work," in a statement cheering the House vote.

"While providing vital funding for programs that preserve our public safety, quality of life, economic competitiveness, energy independence and national defense, this bill abides by the promise that we would cut spending where we can to get our budgets back into balance and keep us on track toward economic recovery," Rogers said.

The bill -- which provides $24.7 billion for DOE, $4.8 billion for the Army Corps and $934 million for Interior's Bureau of Reclamation -- includes a slew of controversial provisions, including steep funding cuts for DOE renewable energy and energy efficiency research programs alongside funding boosts for traditional energy research.

Other incendiary provisions would block funding for a new Obama administration policy aimed at expanding federal protections over wetlands and streams, provide $45 million in new funding for the shuttered Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada and prohibit spending on implementation of energy-efficient light bulb standards set to take effect later this year.

Democrats argued that the bill cut too deeply into agency budgets. Rep. Peter Visclosky of Indiana, the top Democrat on the Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee, said the bill "starkly illustrates the shortsighted nature of the spending cap set by the House budget," in a speech on the House floor.

"The allocation for energy and water is simply insufficient to meet the challenges posed by the economic downturn and to guarantee our national security," he said.

In the agriculture markup, Democrats will likely push for more funding for environmental programs such as wetlands conservation.

The House passed its 2012 agriculture spending bill in June, voting 217-203 to eliminate a Department of Agriculture biofuels program and gut conservation programs (E&ENews PM, June 16).

The bill cut $2.7 billion from USDA's fiscal 2011 budget, reduced spending on the Conservation Stewardship Program $171 million relative to the level mandated by the farm bill and cut the Environmental Quality Incentives Program by $350 million. The House bill also reduced the Wetlands Reserve Program and Grasslands Reserve Program by 64,200 acres and 96,000 acres, respectively.

Schedule: The Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee meets 2 p.m. today in Dirksen 192 to markup the fiscal 2012 Energy and Water Development Appropriations bill.

Schedule: The full Appropriations Committee meets at 3 p.m. tomorrow in Dirksen 106 to adopt fiscal 2012 302(b) allocations, markup the fiscal 2012 Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies bill; Energy and Water Development bill; and Homeland Security Appropriations bill.