A senior Republican said his effort to secure new cuts to clean energy and other programs has created an impasse in the Senate Appropriations Committee and is preventing the Energy-Water bill from coming up for a vote.
Appropriators are deadlocked over the top-line funding level for the fiscal 2026 Energy-Water bill, which has not been released, despite the committee’s top Republican and Democrat already agreeing to a number.
Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), the chair of the Energy-Water Appropriations Subcommittee, said he is rejecting a funding increase negotiated by Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) and ranking member Patty Murray (D-Wash.).
The stalemate could delay action on the bill that funds the Department of Energy, Army Corps of Engineers and Bureau of Reclamation, and is the latest indicator that the bipartisan process Senate appropriators are trying to salvage is hanging by a thread.
“They gave me the top line, and my response was that I can do it for less,” said Kennedy.
“I don’t think they’re going to let me bring that up,” he said of his preferred funding bill. “That’s what my staff tells me, that they’re just going to post it on the website but not let me bring my bill up to be marked up.”
That dynamic, which Collins disputes, means the bill will not be released or voted on before the Senate’s scheduled August recess, and it may spoil the bill’s prospects entirely. It would be a stark turn from the Senate’s bipartisan process last year, which saw the Energy-Water bill advance to the floor on a 28-0 vote.
Two Senate aides familiar with the negotiations said talks are ongoing and that while the bill needs more time, it is not dead. The aides were granted anonymity to speak candidly about the sensitive discussions.
Collins and Murray struck a deal to increase the Energy-Water total for fiscal 2026 by about 3 percent relative to the currently enacted level, said Kennedy. Congress appropriated about $58.2 billion in discretionary funding for the Energy-Water title in fiscal 2024 and later extended that amount through fiscal 2025.
Kennedy said the committee leaders’ 3-percent boost — which would put the total at roughly $59.9 billion — is too steep. He is putting forward a bill that would reduce spending by 3 percent relative to the current level, “so it’s a 6 percent swing,” he said.
“We don’t have to” go above fiscal 2025 funding, Kennedy said. “We can do everything we need to do for less money, so why wouldn’t we do it?”
The nearly $59.9 billion top line that Kennedy indicated Collins and Murray have established is almost $2.7 billion above the level House appropriators have approved for their own fiscal 2026 Energy-Water bill. That legislation got no Democratic support in committee last week and proposes cuts to renewable energy and energy efficiency programs.
Kennedy targets renewable energy
Collins told POLITICO this week that Kennedy’s description of the dispute over the top line was not accurate and that appropriators are “still talking.”
Asked about the bill’s path forward Wednesday, Murray said, “We’re working on it. I don’t have a timeline for you.” Murray is ranking member on the full Appropriations Committee and the Energy-Water Subcommittee.
A spokesperson for Murray said in a statement that the senator “is ready to forge ahead, write, and advance a bipartisan Energy and Water Development bill alongside Chair Kennedy that provides sufficient funding for programs that communities across the country count on every day.”
Kennedy declined to provide specifics when asked Wednesday about the kinds of programs that would be affected by his desired reduction. He said simply, “The cuts I’m going to make — or I would make if they would allow me — are not to defense, and they’re not to the Army Corps.”
Asked if they would affect renewable energy initiatives at the Department of Energy, Kennedy said, “Oh, yes.”
Appropriations subcommittee chairs typically jockey for higher, not lower, allocations for the legislation they are charged with writing, making Kennedy’s stance on his bill unusual even as Republicans work to reduce spending across the 12 appropriations bills.
More appropriations action
Separately on Wednesday, the Senate took another procedural vote to consider its first fiscal 2026 spending bill.
Senators voted 90-8 to advance the House-passed Military Construction-Veterans Affairs proposal. Republican leaders said they want to use it as a shell to bundle their own version of the bill with the Agriculture and Legislative Branch spending bills, but those plans are uncertain.
Kennedy is opposing the Legislative Branch bill, which funds congressional needs, because “it just doesn’t seem appropriate for us to be spending that much extra while everybody else has to take a cut.” He was the only “no” vote on the bill in committee.
The Agriculture bill is the only other fiscal 2026 bill that the Appropriations Committee has advanced with bipartisan support. The committee may try to advance more legislation before the August recess.
The Commerce-Justice-Science bill lost Democratic support earlier this month because of a dispute over language concerning the future headquarters of the FBI. CJS Subcommittee ranking member Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said Wednesday that senators were still discussing its path forward.
Senate appropriators will mark up their Interior-Environment and Transportation-HUD bills Thursday.
Meanwhile, the House Appropriations Committee advanced its State-Foreign Operations legislation along party lines Wednesday. It supports some overseas environmental programs but by and large zeroes out funding for most of the United States’ international climate efforts.
