We have often reported on the power-grabbing, scare-mongering antics of the Environmental Protection Agency. Whenever called upon to address a true environmental crisis, the group usually finds a way to worsen the situation and increase the expense and extent of the response (e.g., Animas River, East Palestine).
Now, the House of Representatives, under the leadership of its new Speaker, Mike Johnson, has actually taken a serious step toward reining in the EPA: It has approved a funding bill slashing the agency’s budget by 40%.
The House passed a sweeping appropriations bill Friday morning that would substantially slash the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) budget and ensure that the Department of the Interior (DOI) expands energy and mineral production on public lands.In a 213-203 vote Friday, the House approved the Fiscal Year 2024 Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations bill, a standalone bill to fund the DOI, its subagencies, the EPA and the White House Council on Environmental Quality. The White House threatened this week to veto the legislation — which just one Democrat, Rep. Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, voted for — and said Republicans were “wasting time” with it.”I am pleased to see the House pass my Interior and Environment Appropriations bill, and I thank my colleagues for their support of this fiscally responsible legislation,” said Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, the chairman of the House Appropriation Committee’s Interior and Environment Subcommittee.
And while this may be a starting point in negotiations, it is a hopeful sign that Congress wants to smother the EPA’s efforts to snuff out the use of fossil fuels.
The massive funding cut proposed by the GOP has virtually no chance of becoming law in this year’s budget but marks a starting point in negotiations for Republicans as they look to negotiate with Democrats in the Senate on funding the government.The bill is one of 12 annual government funding bills Republicans hoped to have passed by a Nov. 17 deadline to prevent a shutdown. However, Republicans face a challenge in staying unified on spending as they look to approve the remaining five bills in the tight window.In addition to the top-line EPA cuts, the GOP bill would also rescind provisions from the climate, tax and health care bill that Democrats passed last year. It targets funding aimed at helping underserved communities combat climate change and pollution.It additionally seeks to defund the EPA’s efforts to curtail toxic pollution and planet-warming emissions, preventing the agency from using funding to enforce its rules on power plants.
While the House proposal is a great start, unfortunately, the US Senate is less likely to embrace the cost-reducing, government-power-throttling goodness.
After House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) crossed the Capitol to meet with Senate Republicans for the first time over lunch Wednesday, senators poured out of the gathering with a pep-rally-like enthusiasm, promising to back the new speaker as he takes his first steps.But his pitch to aggressively pursue spending cuts and to decouple Israel and Ukraine aid have already divided the party across both chambers in ways that could make it difficult — if not impossible — to address critical issues like defending democracies abroad and keeping the federal government open.The speaker’s opening moves have set him on a collision course with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), as both Republican leaders simultaneously struggle to manage their own fractious conferences. An ideological conservative who has staunchly sided with former president Donald Trump after both were elected to national office in 2016, Johnson’s brand of conservatism largely aligns with the right-most wing budding in the Senate Republican conference that McConnell has often clashed with.McConnell — an 81-year-old Republican of a different political generation than Johnson, 51, with a reputation for fiercely pursuing party goals — has in recent years broken with orthodoxy and sided with President Biden and the Senate Democratic majority on key domestic and international priorities.
I will conclude that this is the first good news I have to report in a long time related to the EPA. Let’s hope this is a sign of things to come.
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