GOP Spending Plan Targets EPA

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


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:

  • Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy -$899M
  • Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability -$49M
  • Nuclear Energy -$169M
  • Fossil Energy Research -$31M
  • Clean Coal Technology -$18M
  • Strategic Petroleum Reserve -$15M
  • Energy Information Administration -$34M
  • Office of Science -$1.1B
  • Land and Water Conservation Fund -$348M
  • NOAA -$336M
  • High Speed Rail -$1B
  • Amtrak -$224M
  • Natural Resource Conservation Service -$46M
  • DOE Loan Guarantee Authority -$1.4B

The list of budget cuts that the Republican Study Committee unveiled last month also included a number of cuts for energy and environmental programs.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate