Posted on 02/27/2017 5:16:40 PM PST by jazusamo
The Trump administration plans to propose a one-forth to cut the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) budget, a plan that would end up laying off 20 percent of the agency’s staffers, according to reports.
Trump officials will propose a $6.1 billion for the EPA next year, a $2 billion cut from current levels, according to reports in E&E News and Politico , citing sources.
The agency’s staffing levels would fall to 12,000 workers, from 15,000 currently, according to the reports.
An EPA spokesman did not immediately return a request for comment from The Hill.
The proposed spending levels at the EPA come on the day the White House sent spending blueprints to federal agencies ahead of a budget rollout next month. Trump is planning a $54 billion cut in domestic discretionary spending, which would then be used to increase spending for the Defense Department.
The Trump administration has said it plans to target EPA climate programs expanded under President Obama. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt this weekend that he would work to end several regulatory efforts that the agency has in the works.
If the EPA cuts were realized, the agency’s budget would be at its lowest level since the early 1990s, and its staffing levels would be lower than any time since the 1980s.
It’s unclear if Congress will be willing to accept cuts as deep as those Trump is set to propose for the EPA.
The House Appropriations Committee in 2015 sought to cut the agency’s funding by $718 million, an amount far smaller than the White House will propose.
Environmentalists on Monday slammed proposed deep cuts to the agency, indicating a major push from greens and advocacy groups to keep EPA funding as intact as possible. Democrats are also likely to oppose the effort.
I was thinking the same thing. 12,000 workers ... to do what? To create more legislation, something the Constitution does not empower them to do? Cut the EPA to 200 people, with some contractors in each state ... that’s more reasonable.
The EPA has been the most destructive and communistic organization ever in American history. The destruction it has wrought upon free people and businesses has been beyond anything ever imagined.
We will soon find out how many of the Congressional Republicans want to keep their jobs in 2018.
Amen! Worth repeating.
They need to change the laws to limit lawsuits by environmental extremists.
Spoken like a true dedicated environmentalist.
I grew up in the San Gabriel Valley and experienced the smog of the 50’s.
Have been a hunter and fisherman my entire life in many Western states.
The EPA has done some good but quickly got out of control and has bankrupted thousands with their overreaching rules as they’ve grown into a monster.
BTW...Welcome to Free Republic.
Not enough
24% per quarter is OK.
I’d love to see EPA funding decrease 100%...
Zotted...that was his ONLY POST here, at least under that handle.
Probably did a study to find out how many were eligible for retirement so they could turn in their papers vs. just suddenly putting thousands on unemployment .... using the "attrition method" helps gag those who would howl about him destroying families...
Yep, it was evident he was an enviro Dem troll and got what he deserved.
It’s unclear if Congress will be willing to accept cuts as deep as those Trump is set to propose for the EPA.
That may be absolutely correct, but also absolutely irrelevant.
Congress is like a club of alcoholics which has taken over a powerful association that depends on intelligence and experience, by members who have neither; egalitarianism has an inevitable result, in the political realm. Every time.
That they are spending funds for decades that does not affect them in any way, so long as they can endlessly buy reelection creates a "what have I got to lose?" mindset and culture."
That's pretty much the definition of the existing national D.C. swamp, no?
The House Appropriations Committee in 2015 sought to cut the agency’s funding by $718 million, an amount far smaller than the White House will propose.
Committees which always agree is the worst characteristic of the swamp. I can't recall who said it, but he was absolutely right!
"When, in a group, everyone is responsible for absurd protracted suicidal behavior, no one is responsible; or accountable."
And the swamp expands... until the final collapse.
????
Is that actually English?
A fair start like you say. But can’t more be cut?
Ignorance rules the day, and the illusion that they are being "noble."
To compound the damage to the Constitution and the foundation of a free society, private property, public working taxpayer moneys is given, directly or indirectly with the collusion of equally ignorant legislators, to use the power of government to apply an obviously broken and perverted, twisted, version of what started out as a "good idea."
I had the misfortune of spending my entire working professional life matching, almost exactly the rise and fall of what started out as that "good idea," 1959 to 2007.
The original idea was triggered by the realization that certain large construction projects, created for the benefit of a state, totally intrastate projects, had a demonstrable adverse effect on adjacent states, a useful reality to acknowledge : the clearest examples being the intolerable air pollution in the Los Angeles basin or the dumping of questionably treated sewer effluent into rivers or stream affecting downstream states.
Problems with clear and demonstrable cause and effect.
The leap from the search for solutions for those clear examples to the utter perversion of taking property, or rendering property unusable because seasonal puddles, or ponds created on private property for use by cattle or for recreation affecting no one else should be impossible to justify. But that is the reality of exactly the results, and hundreds, (thousands?) of families have been driven to bankruptcy or worse by small people with too much power, and too little common sense, creating laws that should have never been allowed to abuse, under the guise of "regulations or policies." A power reserved to informed accountable representative legislators, a phrase which, over time, has become a tyrannical oxymoron.
Trump has suggested a means of identifying crimes committed by illegal criminal invaders, but not yet a hint of identifying the crimes committed by wannabe tyrants abusing good intentions by a public and legislature and well-meaning too stupid bureaucracy, ignorant or indifferent to the harm done to millions.
Much more can and should be cut in my view.
Hopefully President Trump will call for more cuts as he surely will be successful in other areas he’s campaigned on.
He will gain the confidence of more and more people as living conditions and the economy grow I would think.
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