Trump’s Budget Cuts Would Reduce U.S. Climate Change Programs Spending plan for Interior Department raises funding for national parks and oil and gas development By Jim Carlton
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-budget-cuts-would-reduce-u-s-climate-change-programs-1495575176?mod=nwsrl_politics_and_policy
President Donald Trump’s proposed $11.7 billion budget for the Department of the Interior raises spending for national parks and oil and gas development, while taking the ax to climate change and other science programs in a plan that has outraged environmental groups.
The spending plan unveiled Tuesday represents an 11% decrease from last year, and if enacted would be the lowest budget for the land and water agency in five years. Hardest hit would be agencies like the U.S. Geological Survey, whose staffing would be slashed by nearly one-fifth amid a consolidation of climate change programs.
The president’s budget proposal is hardly a done deal, and likely to face resistance from Congress. But it offers a map of Mr. Trump’s priorities and agenda.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke defended the president’s budget plan as being necessary to allow the agency to return to its original mission of serving multiple uses for the nation’s public lands and water.
He said that includes “responsible” energy development and conservation. Too much Interior spending, he said, has gone into programs that aren’t needed and hurt rural communities.
“President Trump promised the American people he would cut wasteful spending and make the government work for the taxpayer again, and that’s exactly what this budget does,” Mr. Zinke said.
The increased emphasis on oil and gas development would prove a boon to fossil fuel extractors, while cuts in science and range land management programs could provide regulatory relief to ranchers and the mining industry.
Environmental groups assailed the spending plan and said it, along with a proposed 31% budget cut to the Environmental Protection Agency, would decimate land, water and air protections in this country.
Among the other hot-button proposals in the Interior budget: a provision for future revenues from drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which many Republicans in Congress want to try again to open after failing in several attempts.
“Sadly, this budget proposal shows that Trump is no different than the most extreme members of the Republican Party who have waged war on endangered species and environmental protection for years,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director for the Center for Biological Diversity, a conservation group based in Tucson, Ariz.
The Interior budget seeks to sharply scale back a number of initiatives taken at the agency by the Obama administration.
One of the most dramatic changes is the proposed pullback from science programs. Climate programs would be consolidated, leaving some agencies like the USGS with none at all.
In a telephone briefing Tuesday, Mr. Zinke, a former Republican congressman from Montana, called many of those programs duplicative and said he personally believes climate change is real.CONTINUE AT SITE
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