The Interior Department and EPA stand to see modest funding cuts this fiscal year despite last month’s bipartisan spending agreement to keep overall government funding largely flat.
The Department of Energy could get a slight boost thanks to a small bump to nondefense spending, said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), ranking member on the Senate Energy-Water Appropriations Subcommittee.
The final fiscal 2024 bill texts have yet to be written, and final spending bill allocations have not been released publicly. But the new disclosures from House and Senate appropriations leaders this week offer new insights into how key energy and environment programs will be funded as Congress prepares to negotiate policy riders within all 12 spending bills.
The new top-line spending levels, which were privately handed down to appropriations subcommittee leaders late last week, indicate many federal programs will be spared the steep funding cuts that House Republicans passed in their appropriations bills last year and that Democrats had vowed to reject.
“We’re pleased with the allocation that we have got,” said Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.), chair of the House Energy-Water Appropriations Subcommittee.
“I’m confident that [with] our friends in the Senate — if they negotiate in good faith with us, which I assume they will — we will be able to get to an Energy and Water bill that just about everyone can be happy with,” he said.
Kennedy said the fiscal 2024 Energy-Water bill that funds DOE, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, among other agencies, will provide a “slight increase” in defense spending compared to the Energy-Water bill that Senate appropriators unanimously approved in July.
Nondefense spending would decrease by 1 to 2 percent relative to the levels in that Senate bill. That new nondefense total of roughly $24.3 billion, however, would surpass the current enacted nondefense total by about $1.7 billion.
“It won’t be enough for everyone, but I think the majority of people [will be] OK with it,” Kennedy said.
Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), chair of the Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee, and ranking member Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) said that the new funding total for the fiscal 2024 bill that funds federal environmental and land-use programs is nearly 4 percent below the current funding level.
The cut is 3.85 percent below enacted levels, “or something like that,” Simpson said this week.
The Interior-Environment bill covers funding for the Forest Service as well as Interior Department programs under the Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and National Park Service, among others.
Also included are EPA initiatives such as environmental restoration work, enforcement and compliance efforts, and the Superfund program.
Policy fights
House Republicans, led by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), have vowed to fight for conservative policy riders, including cuts to many federal programs, in the fiscal 2024 bills. Democrats, hoping to preserve environment and energy funding, say they will push back hard.
“One of the big issues will be around the riders, just making sure we can keep riders out,” Pingree said. “Obviously, if we’re going to have to cut somewhere, I think we should cut in different places than Republicans.”
The Republican-drafted Interior-EPA bill that passed the House mostly along party lines in November targeted the waters of the U.S. rule, barred agencies from using the social cost of carbon in cost-benefit analyses and blocked a forthcoming EPA rule to strengthen air quality standards for particulate matter. It also targeted EPA’s power plant emissions and tailpipe rules.
While the new total would slash some funding, those cuts are a far cry from the 35 percent reduction that House Republican
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