The House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday approved a fiscal 2017 spending bill that would prohibit implementation of key Obama administration greenhouse gas emissions rules.
The 31-18 vote along party lines in favor of the Interior and Environment Appropriations Bill followed hours of debate on amendments involving a wide array of matters, from funding for clean water programs to Native American trust lands to sage hens.
The legislation would provide $32.1 billion for the budget year beginning Oct. 1 for the Interior Department and its component offices, the Environmental Protection Agency, and separate organizations such as the Smithsonian Institution. That would be $64 million less than provided for the current fiscal year and $1 billion less than requested by the Obama administration.
Funding for the EPA would drop by $164 million, to $7.98 billion, which would be $291 million under the White House proposal. The agency’s regulatory programs funding would be cut by $43 million from current levels and by $187 million from the administration proposal.
“Again this year there is a great deal of concern over the number of regulatory actions being pursued by EPA in the absence of legislation and without clear congressional direction,” Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), chairman of the Appropriations Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Subcommittee, said in introducing the bill. “For this reason the bill includes a number of provisions to stop unnecessary and damaging regulatory overreach by the agency.”
The bill specifically bars the agency from implementing new regulations on greenhouse gas emissions from new and existing power plants, which if passed would appear to effectively kill the EPA’s Clean Power Plan and New Source Performance Standards.
The Clean Power Plan requires states to develop action plans to meet federally set emissions reduction goals. It is currently frozen by a Supreme Court stay while a massive legal challenge against the rule makes its way through the federal court system.
The New Source Performance Standards, which would effectively require that all new-build coal-fired power plants use carbon capture and sequestration technology, would also be fully stripped of funding under the bill.
While Republican committee members lashed EPA overregulation as bad for the economy and jobs, their Democratic counterparts fired back at what they see as the GOP’s efforts to undermine the agency’s work to protect the environment.
Interior subcommittee Ranking Member Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) introduced an amendment to cut 33 “of the most egregious legislative riders and funding limitations” from the legislation, most pertaining to the EPA and some specifically targeting greenhouse gas and carbon rules.
“The riders in this bill are so harmful and so severe that they cannot be overlooked,” she said. “The bill includes veto-bait provisions that seek to turn back protections for endangered species, restrict control of greenhouse gas emissions, [and] undermine clean water and clean air protections. The number of riders in this bill has become absurd.”
After several minutes of back-and-forth between committee members, the amendment was rejected in a 28-19 vote.
The budget legislation now goes to the House floor for a final vote.
The Senate Appropriations Committee will take up its version of the bill on Thursday. The full budget proposal is not due to be released until after the markup, but Senate Appropriations Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Subcommittee Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said during a Tuesday markup that the bill would provide just over $32 billion for the relevant agencies and would also target EPA regulatory overreach.
The White House on Wednesday did not respond to a request for comment on whether President Barack Obama would veto legislation containing provisions that nix his greenhouse gas reductions programs. However, it has said previously Obama would reject any legislation that overturns the Clean Power Plan.
Provisions like those that McCollum targeted were removed from last year’s spending bill during the House-Senate conference.
