Watch: Climate Depot’s Marc Morano on Fox News debating EPA & Climate: ‘This is the end of superstition in Washington’ – Morano: “What EPA chief Scott Pruitt really represents — you see my smile here — This is the end of superstition in Washington! And it’s actually going back to science and actual cost benefit analysis. It’s very simple: The EPA climate plan is the signature Obama executive order — he couldn’t get it through Congress so he bypassed democracy. But this plan wouldn’t even impact global CO2 levels, let alone global temperatures or storms. Yet Obama administration officials like John Podesta actually sold the regulations as as way to prevent storms and we need this because the storms are getting worse.” “If you want to rescind Al Gore’s nobel prize — give it to fracking industry. they had the greatest effect. U.S. emissions now are at a 25 year low in the first half of 2016 due to fracking taking over for coal.”
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By MICHAEL BASTASCH
The White House is pushing for significant cuts to EPA programs and staff levels, giving a glimpse of how the Trump administration plans on devolving more control to the states.
The budget plan sent from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to EPA leadership calls for eliminating dozens of programs, including at least 16 that have to do with global warming and implementing former President Barack Obama’s climate agenda.
OMB also requested a 30 percent cut in grants to states and a 20 percent reduction in EPA’s workforce through buy-outs and layoffs. In total, President Donald Trump is calling for a roughly 25 percent cut to EPA’s budget — about $2 billion.
The cuts are laid out in a letter sent by William Becker, the executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies (NACAA), to his group’s member state and local regulators. Becker said NACAA received the “pass back” budget information sent from OMG to EPA Monday, according to InsideEPA.
Here are all the programs NACAA said OMB wants “zeroed out”:
Alaska Native Villages
Beach and Fish programs
Brownfield projects
Clean Power Plan implementation
Climate Voluntary partnership programs‹there are 14 separate ones
Diesel Emissions Reduction Act
Endocrine grants
Energy star grants
Environmental education
Environmental justice
Geographical programs for lake [Champlain], L.I. Sound, S.F. Bay and South Florida
Global Change Research
Mexico Border grants
Multi-purpose grants
Office of Public Engagement
Radon
Star Research grants
Small minority businesses
State indoor radon
Targeted air shed grants
U.S. Mexico Border
Water Sense
Democrats and environmentalists have opposed Trump’s budget cuts, and EPA union leaders are hemming and hawing about cutting staffing levels. Even some Republicans aren’t on board with cutting so much from EPA’s budget.
“They are operating at 1989 staffing levels. So you really want to be sure you are not cutting the meat and muscle with the fat,” Oklahoma Republican Rep. Tom Cole, who is on the House Committee on Appropriations, told Inside EPA.
“There’s not that much in the EPA, for crying out loud,” Idaho Republican Rep. Mike Thompson told The Washington Post. Thompson formerly chaired the appropriations committee’s subcommittee dealing with EPA.
What’s unsurprising is Trump wants to get rid of more than a dozen global warming programs at EPA, including funding to implement the Clean Power Plan (CPP)
