77% of Americans support the EPA
Okay, okay, we get it. House Republicans don’t like the idea of trying to reign in pollution. I mean really don’t like it. Many of them already claimed that climate change wasn’t real on the campaign trail, and said they’d fight climate legislation. Then, the powerful chairman of the House Energy Committee, Fred Upton (R-MI), has already sponsored a bill designed to prevent the EPA from enforcing the Clean Air Act, claiming it would kill jobs and whatnot. Now, House Republicans have released their vaunted plan for massive federal spending cuts. At the top of the list? The EPA.
The GOP wants to slash over $1.6 billion from the EPA’s budget. The prime targets within the agency are the Brownfield program — which dedicates funds to cleaning up and restoring contaminated industrial factories that are leeching pollutants into nearby neighborhoods — the Energy Star efficiency program, the greenhouse gas reporting system that’s newly in place, and the Air Quality Management office. Nice. Many of these, as you can probably gather, are crucial to preserving the health and wellbeing of citizens. Which may be why 77% of Americans support the EPA.
But the EPA ain’t the only green fixture on the chopping block. Kate Shepperd whipped up a list of the proposed cuts, and they’re not pretty:
- Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy -$899M
- Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability -$49M
- Nuclear Energy -$169M
- Fossil Energy Research -$31M
- Clean Coal Technology -$18M
- Strategic Petroleum Reserve -$15M
- Energy Information Administration -$34M
- Office of Science -$1.1B
- Land and Water Conservation Fund -$348M
- NOAA -$336M
- High Speed Rail -$1B
- Amtrak -$224M
- Natural Resource Conservation Service -$46M
- DOE Loan Guarantee Authority -$1.4B
Woops.
