I was going to cover three areas very quickly, one of them is that we, like the rest of the Federal Government
is subject to the annual approriation process are operating under a continuing resolution.
The continuing resolution runs from October 1st through December 11th, so that's an improvement over some years
where we used to get one or two weeks continuing resolutions so at least there was certainty
before they left for the recess that we have funding through the December 11th period.
I'll talk a minute about what those funding levels are, and I'll talk very breifly about the 2015 appropriations status
and the 2016 Presidents budget.
There's a very detailed chart here that I will not try to go through, but we have handouts so we can leave with you today,
and for people who go back on line in the future this will be available
online to go back to the archives. And I'll just go to the last slide.
This slide provides a snapshot from a Reclamation wide standpoint
of what our funding levels were for the 2014 enacted appropriations.
The 2015 President's budget which is shown there is the requests.
The 2015 House action and the 2015 Senate action.
So real briefly the continuing resolution we're operating under is the 2014 enacted level,
minus about one 1/20th of 1% so it's 99.95% basically the 2014 enacted level.
And that is done at the account level, when you get to the individual programs, projects and activities
that does not necessarily hold. We're supposed to do the minimum of amount of
spending under continuing resolution until Congress takes final action
on the 2015 appropriation bill
at that time it would have the full details of what will be funded at the individual program, project and activity level.
When Congress returns all 12 annual appropriation bills are still pending.
For the energy and water bill,
the House passed the energy and water bill this summer so that they have come up with
their version of the bill. The Senate released what they call a draft bill and report
so they did not actually take a vote on it in the subcommittee or did it go to a full committee, or is it going to the senate floor.
So at least puts down a marker as to what the thinking process is from the subcommittee
but it's not.. does not have the same standing at this point as the House passed bill.
If you look at the difference between the House and Senate there's a very
substantial difference, you've got the
roughly one billion dollars in the house, it's about 90 million dollars below the 2014 enacted
slightly below the 2015 President's request.
And the Senate is a dramatic increase over
even the at 2014 enacted level.
So if they go through a traditional process and conference a bill and the House and Senate staff get together
make recommendations with the members and members get together and do a full conference
they will work out presumably the difference between that House version
and the Senate version.
The other thing that we've seen occur three times in the last decade
is they're unable to agree on
final funding levels in the details that appear in a conference report that accompanies an appropriation act,
in that case they do a full year continuing resolution. So what we've seen in the other previous
occasions of this is they would work off the 2014 enacted level
maybe with was some minor adjustments like they did for the containing resolution
if that's the case that it doesn't come with a full detailed description from Congress as
to how funding is allocated by programmed project activity.
So in that case the administration is required to send up a spending plan
for each individual agencies that are in the containing resolution.
So we're not sure which outcome we'll see, they will have to do something by December 11th, thats when the current
continuing resolution runs out and hopefully they'll come to an agreement and pass a regular appropriation bill with the full
details, if not we may be doing that spending plan
for a full year continuing resolution.
The other thing is that we're in this non-earmark environment where Congress cannot designate additional funding
separate and apart from the President's budget by projects for specific beneficiaries.
So what we've seen in the senate bill and it's similar to what we've had the last couple years
is that the Senate will add money in categories, so
one of them that is unique two New Mexico in the upper and great plains states is a rual water program where there's authorized
rual water projects and Congress has been able to designate this year in both the House and the Senate versions
additional money for those rual water projects, and then it would be up to the administration using criteria to do the allocations.
There are other categories that have been added by the Senate that are not in the house version the bill,
there's one for fish screens and fish passage, there's one for facility operation maintenance in replacements,
there's one for environmental restoration
and endangered species act and there are a couple of other ones. So there is about six or seven categories where they've done that.
Also the Senate added significant money for the WaterSMART program which is a competitive
program that Reclamations used in recent years to
achieve water savings on a Bureau wide bases and the Senate add quite a bit of money to the
WaterSMART Grants program which is the one Gray mentioned for at least for 15,
we'll be doing a request for proposals or funding opportunity annoucement in the near future.
So finely I'll just mention on 2016, our 2016 budget is still under development within the administration.
The current schedule would be for it to be released on the first Monday in February which would be early next year.
Recent experience tells us that if the
release date may depend on congressional action on the 2015 appropriation bill
in Congress finalizing that and sending it to the President for signature.
The administrations generally wanted to wait and in recent years until the prior year appropriation
bill is enacted before they make final decisions on the budget in this case the 2016 budget.
So a couple of the unknowns on dates but currently we would expect Congress will hopefully
complete action on 2015 when they return in November
and before the December 11th date, and then hopefully we'll have a President's budget on
early February. Thank you.