Senators hit Obama’s EPA budget request

Members of both parties took aim at President Obama’s budget request for the Environmental Protection Agency during a Senate hearing Tuesday. 

Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said Obama’s budget, which looks to boost the EPA’s funding next year, consists of “misplaced priorities.” 

{mosads}The agency, he said, shouldn’t look to fund a major climate rule for power plants while its implementation has been stayed by the Supreme Court, a reference to Obama’s request for $235 million for the Clean Power Plan as part of the budget. The agency, he said, should instead look to invest in programs already on the books.  

Obama, he said, is “sacrificing EPA’s core programs to advance his climate agenda.”

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), the committee’s ranking member, said the agency should look to do more to improve water quality around the country, especially in light of the Flint, Mich., water crisis. Obama’s budget cuts funding for a state water infrastructure loan program by about 30 percent from 2016 levels. 

“People say, ‘let’s make America great again,’” Boxer said, alluding to GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump.

“America is great already, but how do we stand here with an infrastructure that is rated D [by the American Society of Civil Engineers],” she said. “We have to continue to invest and improve our nation’s failing water infrastructure.”

McCarthy noted that the budget does include a request for more water infrastructure funding for states, but she said the agency is facing such a tight budget crunch that it can’t do more than that.

“We are sympathetic to the need for more state revolving fund moneys, and we’ll try to work with states and communities to make the most of those,” she said.

In his 2017 budget, released in February, Obama proposed spending $8.3 billion on the EPA, roughly $200 million more than Congress appropriated in 2016. Overall, the agency’s funding is down from around the $10 billion mark seven years ago.