Trump Administration To Propose Cutting EPA Budget By 25%

Another official said the State Department’s budget could be cut by as much as 30 per cent, which would force a major restructuring of the department and elimination of programmes.

“This defense spending increase will be offset and paid for by finding greater savings and efficiencies across the federal government”. “Work we’ve been working on for a year and a half is now completely jeopardized”, he said, including a study on how heat waves affect vulnerable populations in NY. “We’re going to restore power back to the people, recognize the regulatory uncertainty, and the regulatory state needs to be reined in”. For Mr Trump, the prime-time speech is an opportunity to refocus his young presidency on the core economic issues that were a centrepiece of his White House run.

The Office of Management and Budget will first respond to the proposals ahead of the development of a full budget, which will then go to Congress.

His proposed cut is significantly deeper than those advanced by House appropriators in the past.

EPA staff are bracing for cuts to employee numbers as well as oversight. If the EPA loses its strength and its way, the Flint water crisis may become nothing more than a quaint memory. “We’re going to be partners with those states and not adversaries”, he said. Any funding cuts, therefore, are in keeping with the administration’s approach to the agency thus far. “And I think maybe next week you may be hearing about some of those”, he said at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) taking place near Washington, D.C. “There’s more to our government than just defense”. It will instead focus on ways to produce long-term economic growth by slashing taxes, he said in a Fox News interview on Sunday.

Trump appointed Scott Pruitt, who once described himself as the “leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda”, to head the agency. “Nothing. We can grow jobs, grow the economy while being good stewards of the environment”.

Trump is reportedly considering slashing $2 billion from the EPA’s annual budget and cutting staffing at the agency by one-fifth. Republicans only control 52 Senate seats, and there are already signs of GOP unease.

The Sierra Club accused President George W. Bush’s EPA of undoing “decades if not a century of progress on the environment” with such brazen moves as refusing to implement the 1992 Kyoto climate deal.

“He recognizes that that is a key role for EPA”, Murkowski said.

The Obama-era Clean Energy Plan and the updated Clean Water Rule, which respectively aimed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and keep water unpolluted across the nation, will be facing the firing squad.

“People across the country look at the EPA at the way they look at [the Internal Revenue Service]”.

Several other Republicans also were not yet ready to back Trump’s budget plan. Later that same day, I was glad to see Sen.

Though no specific information has yet been given about the supposed executive orders, two sources who attended a meeting with members of the Trump administration have revealed that they were briefed about future executive orders from the president.

Beyond the funding EPA steers to the states, the agency has a wide portfolio of work mandated by Congress, from setting ambient air quality standards for pollution and scrutinizing the toxicity of a slew of chemicals to reviewing state permits for proposed construction in wetlands.