Ryan budget attacks Obama’s climate agenda

Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) fiscal budget proposal leaves little back when it comes to attacking President Obama’s climate agenda, which Republicans have assailed as an onslaught of regulations and federal overreach. [READ RYAN’S BUDGET PROPOSAL.]

The chairman of the House Budget Committee unveiled his 2015 proposal for what may be his last time on Tuesday. The budget seeks to slash roughly $5.1 trillion from estimated spending during the coming decade.

{mosads}While the most notable cut in spending comes from repealing Obama’s signature healthcare law, Ryan’s budget targets funding across agencies that the administration is relying on to advance the Obama’s climate agenda, a crucial piece of the president’s second-term legacy.

The blueprint hits spending for “government-wide climate-change-related activities,” mainly through cuts to federal agencies’ funds for overseas climate-change initiatives.

It also targets the administration’s clean technology and strategic climate funds, established in 2010, which provide foreign assistance to boost energy-efficient projects aimed at mitigating climate change.

The budget blasts the administration’s carbon-emissions rules, claiming the Environmental Protection Agency has abused it powers in furthering the president’s climate plan.

Nearly two of the 100 pages in the document are spent slamming the carbon-emissions rule as a war on coal.

As in past budgets, the expansion of onshore and offshore energy production play a crucial part.

The blueprint lays heavy blame on the administration for making fossil fuels more expensive and driving up gasoline prices, adding ammunition to Republican calls for more domestic energy production. 

The budget pushes for more oil and gas exploration in Alaska, the Outer Continental Shelf and intermountain West. It also keeps in line with the agreement made earlier this year with Democrats that oil and gas exploration would be allowed along a maritime boundary in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Keystone XL oil pipeline receives an honorable mention in the proposal, but no proposal of a path forward for the $5.4 billion project is included.

While the Ryan budget stays in line with the bipartisan budget agreement for 2015, deeper agency cuts are planned after 2015 to stick to the GOP’s pledge to balance the budget within 10 years.