Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
7/11/2014
A provision in the Fiscal Year 2015 Interior and Environment Appropriations bill, reported out of subcommittee this week, would prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from using funding to carry out proposed regulations to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from existing and new coal-fired power plants. “Again this year, there is a great deal of concern over the number of regulatory actions being pursued by the EPA in the absence of legislation and without clear congressional direction. For this reason, the bill includes a number of provisions to address some of these concerns and to stop unnecessary and damaging regulatory overreach by the agency,” Subcommittee Chairman Ken Calvert (R-Calif.) said during a subcommittee markup of the bill.
Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R- Ky.) said the bill served as a defense against overreaching regulation. “It’s a critical bill since it deals so much with our nations land management, our energy security and ultimately jobs. With this bill and with the energy and water bill that’s on the floor today I’m proud that we are standing up on this committee for these jobs and against an administration which at every turn has tried to find new regulations that will hamper economic activity,” Rogers said.
The EPA proposed two regulations under the Clean Air Act concerning carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants. The first, proposed last year, largely mandates the use of carbon capture and storage technology on all new-build plants. The second, proposed in June, sets emissions reduction targets for each state and requires the states to develop plans to reach those targets which must then be approved by the agency.
EPA Would Be Funded at $7.5 Billion
The bill would provide a total of $7.5 billion for the EPA next year, a cut of almost 10 percent compared to current funding levels and 5 percent below the Obama Administration’s FY 2015 budget request of $7.89 billion. According to a committee press release, the bill would cut administrative funding for the agency by $24 million, including a 50 percent reduction to the Office of the Administrator, the Office of Congressional Affairs, and the Office of the Chief Financial Officer; and keep EPA staffing levels to 15,000, “the lowest level since 1989.”
At this week’s markup hearing, Rogers called the funding cuts a “severe punishment” for the agency for its unwillingness to cooperate with the Appropriations Committee. “The ability of the committee and the subcommittees to properly oversee agencies and to allocate funding for their purposes depends upon their willingness to share information with us about their budgets. To my knowledge there’s been no agency that has been more unresponsive to the inquiries of the congress about how they’re spending our dollars than the EPA,” Rogers said. “They just simply will not respond to inquiries. They don’t share the information that we have to have to properly oversee that agency among others and to properly construct their funding for the next year. That’s why in this bill the agency is severely punished.”
Democrats Unhappy With Bill
Democratic lawmakers expressed disappointment with the bill this week. Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) called the provision in the bill blocking the EPA from implementing the proposed power plant regulations “a demonstration of solidarity with climate change deniers and the coal industry.” Lowey also spoke harshly about the bill as a whole, saying, “Of the 11 FY15 bills that have been released, this is perhaps the worst. Even though the allocation, $162 million more than the current level, was sufficient to produce a legitimate bill, the majority squandered these additional resources.”
Subcommittee Ranking Member James Moran (D-Va.) said lawmakers were not recognizing the importance of the EPA. “The most significant cuts in the bill center on the Environmental Protection Agency. I recognize that with certain members … there is a level of frustration with the management of the agency but I am deeply concerned that the magnitude of the cuts and their continuation year after year weaken the very foundations of the agency and the important programs that it administers,” Moran said. “It’s not about these daily frustrations, it’s about the mission of EPA that needs to go on, and I think needs to be more robustly funded. It’s time to stop thinking of EPA accounts, particularly like the safe drinking water and the waste water infrastructure revolving funds as just an easy pool of money for other agencies and programs in the bill to be funded.”
