GOP Spending Plan Targets EPA

Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.

House Republicans want to pass a bill that would permanently bar the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas pollution. That bill isn’t going to go to the floor immediately, but in the meantime, GOPers are looking to make major funding cuts to the agency components that are crafting those regulations. The plan GOP appropriators are releasing today would chop $1.6 billion from the EPA’s budget.

The list of cuts in the continuing resolution (a “CR” in Washington-speak), a seven-month spending package, includes trimming $9 million from the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reporting Registry, $5 million from Cap and Trade Technical Assistance, and $25 million from State and Local Air Quality Management. There’s also the very real possibility that House members will tack on an amendment that would formally bar the EPA from using any resources authorized by the CR to develop greenhouse gas regulations. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), the chair of the powerful energy and commerce committee and the author of a bill that would permanently bar the EPA from issuing greenhouse gas regulations, said yesterday that he anticipates his colleagues will include some language on the EPA in the CR. “I expect that to be part of that bill, assuming we can do that within the rules of the House,” Upton told CNBC’s Larry Kudlow in an interview yesterday.

Also on the chopping block at EPA: $48 million for the brownfields program, which cleans up polluted land, and $7.4 million for Energy Star, the appliance efficiency program. Also atop the list of target for cuts are a number of clean energy programs, scientific research and development, and public transportation. Behold: