Biggus
The EP capital funding line (which is what you're talking about) is there now and spread over the next nine years or so. The problem is that the perception of risk (God knows why, it's a simple ship, but see previous posts!), mainly driven by continuing uncertainty over whether its Dave B or Dave C, is making the Alliance include substantial risk provision in its cost estimate, which drives it over the total EP provision. The design is not yet mature enough (although it should be for the amount of money spent) to do actual costed trade-offs, so they're hacking out capability based on crudish estimates. Result - impasse, the DEC argue they're not getting what they asked for, the DPA / Alliance say they can't do it for the budget, and therefore CDP, DCDS and the pollies won't sign off on Main Gate. Lack of funding provision is not the problem - it's p1ss-poor costing and unwillingness to make a decision that's delaying it.