Posted on 01/27/2017 8:36:57 AM PST by rktman
The former leader of President Donald Trump’s EPA transition team said Thursday he expects the president to slash the agency’s budget and staff.
Myron Ebell, the director of the Center for Energy at free market group Competitive Enterprise Institute, told reporters that Trump is considering reducing by magnitudes the agency’s workforce. It currently stands at 15,000 employees nationwide.
“Let’s aim for half and see how it works out, and then maybe we’ll want to go further,” Ebell said, referring to his wish to see the EPA slashed by at least half. He left Trump’s transition team last week, but was at one time on the president’s short list to head the agency.
Half of the EPA’s budget is transferred to state and local areas to update infrastructure projects and environmental cleanup efforts. Ebell, who is a long-time EPA critic and climate skeptic, said the cuts would likely fall on the remaining half of the agency’s budget, which supports a portion of federal employees.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
Cut by 50% each year would be best.
i was never good at math- took me 2 years to pass pre algebra- still didn’t understand it when all was said and done-
He did? How did it get to cabinet level bureaucracy?
Not just the EPA, but all government agencies and departments desperately try to spend every last penny they are earmarked to justify next year’s budget. I’ve seen it up close and personal. If there is money left over and the clock is ticking, they’ll buy expensive office furniture and wall ‘art’ to use up their money. The system itself is broken.
In half?
Drawn and quartered, I say!
And get the IG checking out the collusion (often via private e-mail accounts operated under pseudonyms) between EPA personnel and environmental activists. That’s such an abuse of trust and power that it should be prosecuted, or failing that, at least brought prominently into the light of day.
You know, I wouldn’t mind seeing the EPA (or at least their budget) actually totally dedicated to cleaning up Superfund-type sites, rather than promulgating regulationss on the count of wooly bear hairs, or whatever it is the EPA does these days.
Those sites need cleanup, no private entity is going to take it on themselves to do it, the jobs are truly “shovel ready,” and the work should spur innovation in toxic waste handling and removal.
Thoughts?
Don’t know.
Actually, I would rather see that any new industrial facility (i.e. factory, refinery, electrical generation plant, etc.) that chooses to build on a brownfield site be fast tracked and exempt from environmental analysis since the site is already dirty. The new plant owner is also exempt from liability from contaminants existing prior to the creation of the new facility. The EPA can step in if monitoring wells surrounding the site show that historical contaminants are escaping from the site, and can address that instead of a wholesale cleanup of the entire site. In any event, the new facility owner will not be liable for historical contaminants. This would do a lot toward putting Americans to work since there are thousands of acres of prime industrial land with excellent infrastructure service already in place available for fast tracked factories.
So the job has mostly been done, and the remainders such as they are can be handled locally. The EPA's mission has been accomplished and it should be dissolved, remaining functions delegated to the states and municipalities. This is Trump's plan and it is brilliant. The only thing really standing in its way is the stubborn tendency of any bureaucracy to perpetuate its own existence, and the resistance of the special interests now being served.
Makes sense for a lot of brownfields, although some of them are remote, or heaven forbid, radioactive. We ought to write a letter to the Donald.
I can live with that!
Yes, and at the expense of the polluters who created the problems.
So 100%??
99.99%.................
Cutting torch.
I work in SE Michigan and do a lot of travelling for my job. There is acres of concrete all over the place from where they bulldozed old auto factories. At these sites, where there has been heavy industry for almost 100 years, why in the heck do you need to go through a full environmental review and search for endangered flora / fauna??? If the building meets code, and any new activities meet existing (or as I prefer, rolled back to 2002) environmental regulations, they should be able to break ground in under a year instead of the three to five years it takes now.
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