GOP notches win as Interior-EPA spending bill passes House

By Andres Picon | 07/25/2024 06:45 AM EDT

The $38.5 billion legislation would slash funding for clean energy and climate programs. EPA would be cut by 20 percent.

Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho).

Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), chair of the House Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee, during floor debate this week. House Television

House Republicans muscled through their fiscal 2025 Interior-Environment bill on Wednesday, sending the $38.5 billion legislation into an uncertain future.

The 210-205 vote capped off a chaotic three days for the House GOP in which intraparty tensions forced House leadership to pull the Energy-Water bill from the floor at the last minute and indefinitely delay votes on several other spending measures.

Next week’s House votes were canceled, and with members set to begin a six-week recess Thursday, the chamber’s push to pass all 12 appropriations bills ahead of the Sept. 30 fiscal year deadline is in tatters.

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Passage of H.R. 8998, which would fund the Department of the Interior and EPA, appeared to be little more than a symbolic victory for the House GOP. Many of its provisions will not survive bicameral negotiations expected to take place after the November elections.

The Interior-Environment bill includes some bipartisan provisions, such as a permanent increase to federal wildland firefighter salaries.

It is also packed with conservative policy riders that target core components of Democrats’ climate and clean energy goals, and it proposes steep cuts to EPA and Interior programs — including a 20 percent reduction to EPA’s budget.

House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said the bill “reins in the Biden administration’s overreach, ensuring that misguided Green New Deal-style rules and regulations cannot be implemented.”

Wednesday’s roll call followed hours of amendment votes in which Republicans tacked on dozens of new provisions prohibiting funding for a range of federal regulations concerning endangered species, federal lands, greenhouse gas emissions and energy development.

The bill’s base text already included similar provisions to expand mining, increase oil and gas lease sales, block funding for the American Climate Corps and reject eight different climate-related executive orders.

The legislation’s $38.5 billion top line is about $72 million below the fiscal 2024 level. EPA’s budget would shrink by $1.8 billion, with significant cuts to agency programs focused on science and technology, environmental justice and chemical risk reviews. The Superfund cleanup program and the Diesel Emissions Reduction Program would see higher budget lines.

Interior funding would drop by $42 million, in part because of cuts to offices such as the Bureau of Land Management, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the National Park Service.

Democrats bemoaned those cuts.

“Rather than making sound investments to protect our air and water, preserve our national parks and ensure the environment we all share and live in remains clean and protected, the majority’s bill benefits the most egregious polluters and climate science deniers, jeopardizes public health and safety, hinders our responses to the climate crisis and endangers rural and low-income communities,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), ranking member on the House Appropriations Committee.

Republican appropriators have said some of the proposed cuts were necessary because of the need to allocate more money to other parts of the bill.

A Supreme Court ruling earlier this year, for example, required Congress to appropriate additional funding for the Indian Health Service and other federal programs for Native Americans, said Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), chair of the House Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee.

The bill also sets aside $3.6 billion for wildfire activities and to make permanent a raise for wildland firefighters first implemented through the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law.

Senate Appropriations Chair Patty Murray has indicated that her chamber’s version of the Interior-Environment bill — set to be released and marked up Thursday — will similarly include the firefighter pay raise.

Boebert triumphs on amendments

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.).
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) added multiple amendments to the fiscal 2025 Interior-EPA spending bill. | Patrick Semansky/AP

Lawmakers voted on more than 90 amendments Wednesday and adopted numerous targeting administration climate and energy rulemakings.

Democrats allowed many of the amendments to pass by voice vote without requesting roll call votes, under the apparent assumption that the bill would never become law.

Rep. Lauren Boebert had more amendments considered than any other lawmaker. The House passed proposals from the Colorado Republican that would block funding for the implementation or enforcement of Interior’s fluid mineral leasing rule, as well as for proposed land-use plan updates at Interior’s Colorado River Valley and Grand Junction field offices.

Lawmakers passed two amendments from Boebert that would shift funds from the “EPA bureaucracy” to the Forest Service and the Office of Inspector General.

The House adopted an amendment from Boebert that would reduce the salary of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to $1. Amendments to similarly cut the salary of EPA Administrator Michael Regan and other administration officials failed, as did an amendment to prohibit funding for EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.

The House adopted an amendment from Rep. Harriet Hageman that would bar the BLM from administering its Western Solar Plan. That program aims to open up millions of acres of federal lands to commercial solar development applications.

Other approved amendments from the Wyoming Republican would block funding for the implementation of certain resource management plans and prohibit EPA from operating its Office of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.

An amendment from Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) would prevent funding for oil and gas royalty increases in the Inflation Reduction Act.

Lawmakers passed two amendments from Rep. Pete Stauber (R-Minn.) that would prohibit funds for the expanding or designating as a national monument the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, which is close to deposits of nickel, cobalt, copper and other critical minerals.

Other approved amendments would prohibit funding for environmental justice and diversity programs at EPA, block funding for EPA’s tailpipe emissions rule for heavy-duty vehicles and reduce funding for the Fish and Wildlife Service.