It’s been obvious since November 9 that the Trump regime would slash the Environmental Protection Agency budget. Senate confirmation of the climate science-denying, fossil-fuel puppet and liar Scott Pruitt as the new chief of the agency he despises and has sued 16 times made it clear that budget trouble would be coming down the pike.
On Tuesday, Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis got down to specifics in reporting at The Washington Post that the regime’s 2018 blueprint for the EPA would include a 25 percent cut in the overall budget—from $8.2 billion to $6.1 billion. That would match the nominal level of the 1991 EPA budget. But figure in inflation and the spending power of that 2018 budget would be less than what the EPA was appropriated in 1971.
Chopping out such a hunk of spending would mean firing a fifth of the agency’s 15,000 employees, giant cuts in some programs and zeroing out others entirely. That latter category was said by the Post to include 38 programs.
Timothy Gardner and Valerie Volcovici at Reuters are now reporting further details:
The 23-page 2018 budget proposal, which aims to slice the environmental regulator's overall budget by 25 percent to $6.1 billion and staffing by 20 percent to 12,400 as part of a broader effort to fund increased military spending, would cut deeply into programs like climate protection, environmental justice and enforcement. [...]
State grants for lead cleanup, for example, would be cut 30 percent to $9.8 million. Grants to help native tribes combat pollution would be cut 30 percent to $45.8 million. An EPA climate protection program on cutting emissions of greenhouse gases like methane that contribute to global warming would be cut 70 percent to $29 million.
The proposal would cut funding for the brownfields industrial site cleanup program by 42 percent to $14.7 million. It would also reduce funding for enforcing pollution laws by 11 percent to $153 million.
Such cuts would, obviously, be devastating.
As a consequence, the proposed budget will certainly collide with Democrats in the House and Senate. But some Republicans also aren’t likely to go along with it.
The Post quoted Republican Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho, a former chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on interior, environment and related agencies, who said that dramatic cuts in the 21st century have already reduced the agency’s budget. For example, the 2004 EPA budget was $8.4 billion. Adjusted for inflation, that’s $10.7 billion in 2016 dollars. “There’s not that much in the EPA, for crying out loud,” Simpson said.
Enough Republicans may join the majority of Democrats to rescue some EPA programs the White House wants to slash and burn. But no way can it be called a victory if, say, a few hundred of those 3,000 jobs are saved and the cuts are held to 20 percent instead of 25 percent.