EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson's whirlwind tour of Capitol Hill will continue Friday, when she is scheduled to justify President Obama's proposed budget for fiscal 2012 during a visit to the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

It will be her third trip to discuss the request with lawmakers, following last week's appearances before a House Appropriations subpanel and the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

EPA is seeking $9 billion, which is a drop of more than 10 percent from the agency's current budget but still nearly $2 billion more than it received at the end of the George W. Bush administration. The administration is hoping to steer EPA resources toward regulations and enforcement, which Jackson has described as key to the agency's core mission of protecting people from harmful chemicals, air pollution and contaminated water.

On Friday, Jackson will appear before two panels that have been the most critical of EPA in the new Congress. It is a joint hearing of the Energy and Power Subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), and the Environment and Economy Subcommittee, led by Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.).

In previous hearings, both lawmakers have challenged Jackson on the agency's new air and water regulations, as well as rules on coal mining. Whitfield, who joined House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) last week in introducing a bill to stop EPA from limiting greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act, will likely use the hearing to get more details on the agency's climate program, which would see a boost of $56 million to $252.9 million under the president's request.

Neither side of the aisle has been content with the proposed budget. On both sides of the Capitol, Democrats have argued that the agency would pull too much money from grant programs, while Republicans have said the agency should be spending less money on new regulations.

Though the agency's own research and programs would see percentage cuts in the low single digits under the president's request, funding to the states would drop by more than 20 percent, Interior and Environment Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) said during a hearing last week.

"The demand for 2012 is simple," he told Jackson. "Cut more and regulate less."

Simpson also accused the president of "playing politics with his budget" by slashing funding from popular programs that support water infrastructure upgrades and reduce air pollution from old diesel trucks. Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the top Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works committee, predicted Congress will restore funding for the programs.

When Senate appropriators proposed their version of a spending bill for the rest of fiscal 2011 on Friday, it contained no major cuts to the water grant programs, which would lose $1.9 billion under the continuing resolution that passed the House last month. Though neither side has yet unveiled a proposal for next year, the divide suggests that one flashpoint in the battle over federal spending will be the grants, which consume about a third of EPA's budget.

"We've got to fix the nation's budget challenges, but no American would try to balance their household budget by skimping on their kids' safety, and just the same, Congress should not be putting austerity ahead of public health," Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) said during the hearing (E&E Daily, March 3).

At a time when the Obama administration's environmental policies are a subject of intense debate on Capitol Hill, the annual gauntlet of budget hearings has also given lawmakers plenty of opportunities to press Jackson on specific topics. She took questions last week on a wide range of issues, including a recent New York Times series that suggested political concerns may have prompted the agency to narrow its study of the impacts of natural gas drilling on water quality.

Schedule: The hearing is Friday, March 11, at 10 a.m. in 2123 Rayburn.

Witness: EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.