Budget Hearing – Environmental Protection Agency
House Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies
2025-05-15
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Source: Congress.gov
Participants
Transcript
And we are now starting to learn from your work, Administrator Zeldin, that there are serious questions about where some of this funding has gone. Specifically, the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund recipients with potential conflicts of interest and other program integrity concerns that several news outlets as well as the Wall Street Journal have reported. The agency has also hired more than 1,300 additional FTEs with this supplemental funding. We told them not to do that, not to hire permanent employees with this supplemental one-time funding. I have concerns about the potential staffing cliff when this supplemental funding runs out.
which means absorbing the supplemental FTEs in our discretionary budget. Administrator Zeldin, I know you're well aware of this issue. Additionally, the EPA has doubled down on its regulatory footprint over the last few years. The EPA regulations from the Biden administration have made it harder for industry to thrive and sometimes even survive, even though those very industries have made great strides in reducing their environmental footprint. The administration is taking a hard look at the EPA's funding priorities and regulatory overreach, which I believe is much needed. I want clean air and clean water just as much as anyone does, but we must find an appropriate balance that also continues to promote economic growth and jobs here at home. Administrator Zeldin, I have been following your actions to reduce regulatory burdens and right-size the agency and implement common-sense solutions to lower costs and increase American competitiveness. I hear often from various industries in Idaho, from farmers to manufacturers, to chemical producers that they are looking for regulatory certainty. I hope that this hearing today will assure my constituents and industries in Idaho and across the country that the EPA has plans to provide this certainty, whether it's rewriting rules or processing chemical or pesticide applications within the statutory deadlines. This hearing will also give us an opportunity to hear about how the skinny budget comports with the administration's goals for the agency, including returning EPA to its statutory functions. The request provides $4.2 billion for the EPA, which is $5 billion below the FY25 continuing resolution. It proposes deep cuts to state and tribal assistance grants, which we likely cannot agree to in this bill. But I look forward to hearing from you as part of the initial steps in this budget process. I'm ready to have the necessary and tough deliberations about how best to limit federal spending resources in order to ensure our natural resources, our lands and waters in Idaho and across the country are protected and preserved while still promoting economic development and job creation.
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Unknown (SPEAKER_02)
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Administrator Selden, for being here today. Welcome back to the House. So the mission of the EPA is to protect human health and the environment. not to serve industry. But so far, under your leadership, the agency has undertaken a series of actions that weaken environmental protection and harm public health to the benefit of polluters.
In the first 100 days of this administration, you have worked to systematically dismantle the EPA, implement Project 2025, going along with the questionable activities of DOGE, all to the detriment of the American public. Under your direction, the EPA has illegally frozen funding for the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund to lower energy costs and terminated grants to ensure that all people are equally protected from environmental and health hazards. You are pursuing a massive reorganization that would eliminate EPA's science research arm and shuffle highly specialized scientists off to process chemical reviews for industry. The work done by the Office of Research and Development provides the foundation for credible decision-making to safeguard human health and ecosystems from environmental pollutants. It is critical to informing agency decisions on things like environmental and health risks of PFAS. Destroying this office will cause irreparable harm that may take decades to reverse and reduce America's standing as a world leader in environmental health research. I am sorry to say that seems to be the goal of this administration, to hobble environmental protection. This is certainly evident by the fiscal year 2026 budget, which proposes to cut the EPA by almost 55%. Under this budget, states would suffer catastrophic cuts. The budget proposes to all but eliminate categorical grants which states use to run their environmental programs. The Environmental Council of the States, which is a nonpartisan association of state environmental agency leaders, sent you a letter that stated that these cuts will devastate economic development, critical infrastructure, and environmental protections across the nation. destroying the EPA and eliminating funding for states would create the perfect storm, leaving our country without any environmental protection and giving a free pass to polluters.
Finally, the budget characterizes EPA's climate change work as unnecessary and radical. Climate change is the greatest environmental threat facing our planet, with profound consequences for public health and the well-being of future generations. Ignoring and denying its existence does not make the problem go away. In three years, the U.S. has experienced 73 weather and climate-related disasters, each causing over a billion dollars in damages. This is an average cost of $157 billion a year. You've seen firsthand what an existential threat climate change is to our future.
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