The House has narrowly passed a spending bill containing deep cuts to EPA's budget and dozens of legislative riders that Democrats call “poison pills," setting up a difficult negotiation with the Senate, where the Appropriations Committee advanced a markedly different bill Thursday.
The House bill’s top-line number is $38.5 billion; the Senate bill’s is $44.6 billion.
The House bill would set EPA’s budget at $7.36 billion, a $1.8 billion (20%) cut. The Senate bill provides “modest increases” for all EPA programs, the Senate Appropriations Committee said.
The 210-205 vote approving the bill in the House Wednesday night reflected the sharp disagreement between the parties but also, given the 28-1 Senate committee vote, the different approach the two chambers have toward appropriations bills.
The Senate has preferred a more bipartisan process, while the House has continued with its strategy of sharp funding cuts and controversial policy riders that have little chance of surviving a House-Senate conference committee.
One of the riders in the House bill would block EPA tailpipe emissions rules for light, medium, and heavy-duty vehicles. Others would prevent implementation of new National Environmental Policy Act regulations as well as a rule from the Bureau of Land Management on landscape health. Others would prohibit spending on specific endangered species, including the lesser prairie-chicken, wolverine and northern long-eared bat.
“I am proud that this fiscally responsible bill reins in unnecessary spending and rejects the Biden administration's misguided regulatory agenda,” said House Interior and Environment Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Mike Simpson, R-Idaho.
Simpson noted that the bill fully funds the Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) program, which provides money to rural communities to make up for lost revenue from tax-exempt federal lands.
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In language benefiting pesticide manufacturers, the bill says EPA cannot approve any labeling or make changes to labeling “that is inconsistent with or in any respect different from the conclusion” of a human health assessment performed under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act or with a carcinogenicity classification.
The language would specifically help Bayer, which contends that FIFRA should pre-empt state labeling laws. The company has lost cases brought by plaintiffs who allege exposure to Roundup caused their non-Hodgkin lymphoma, but they were not adequately warned of the dangers. EPA says the product’s active ingredient, glyphosate, is likely non-carcinogenic and there are “no risks of concern to human health from current uses."
Rep. Chellie Pingree, ranking member of the House Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee, said on the House floor that “cutting funding for [EPA] by $1.8 billion, or 20%, is irresponsible and severely impacts needed investments in environmental justice, enforcement, and climate change.” She also said the 92 “poison pills” would “cripple environmental protection, undermine climate change policies, and add to the national deficit.”
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