House appropriators on Wednesday unveiled proposed funding for the Interior Department and EPA, cutting deep into science and research programs, bolstering extraction on public lands, and signing off on the Trump administration’s new Wildland Fire Service.
The House Interior and Environment Appropriations Subcommittee released a $38.9 billion spending bill for fiscal 2027, which includes a 20 percent cut to EPA, or about $1.8 billion. Interior’s funding would go up by about 2 percent.
“America’s public lands and natural resources are not just part of our heritage — they are strategic assets that support recreation, connect our communities, grow opportunity, and reinforce our way of life,” Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said in a statement.
Cole said the measure focuses on “practical stewardship: managing our lands responsibly, unleashing domestic energy, strengthening wildfire response, and ensuring agencies are focused on results instead of red tape.”
The House’s bill includes $1.54 billion for the consolidation of Interior firefighting forces under the new Wildland Fire Service. Nearly 4,000 employees across agencies including the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service have already been merged into the new organization, which Interior Secretary Doug Burgum indicated could grow to 13,000 staffers.
But that number includes absorbing certain Forest Service employees, and debate remains about whether Congress must sign off on such a cross-agency deal. Notably, the fiscal 2027 spending bill provides the Forest Service with $5.2 billion for wildland fire management and suppression.
The proposal also aims to bolster energy production across federal lands, with language that would prohibit funding to be used for new mineral withdrawals without congressional approval, and would reinstate hardrock mining leases near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota.
Twin Metals Minnesota, a subsidiary of Chilean mining company Antofagasta, saw its leases canceled under the Biden administration in 2022.
The House bill would also implement new fees for offshore wind turbine inspections on the outer continental shelf, agreeing with a proposal put forth by the Trump administration, which has aggressively sought to slow or stop renewable energy production.
Those fees would include $15,400 for a visual inspection of a wind turbine generator to $72,800 per physical inspection of a wind turbine generator, for example.
The legislation is the House Republicans’ opening negotiating position ahead of months of negotiations. The Senate will likely proceed with bipartisan spending bills, and the two chambers must reconcile their differences.
Democrats slammed the House Interior-EPA spending bill, pointing to cuts for Interior agencies and national arts and culture, as well as the lack of language to rein in spending on President Donald Trump’s proposed triumphal arch.
“With the release of the FY27 Interior bill, it’s clear House Republicans are once again pushing an agenda that accelerates the climate crisis, threatens the air we breathe and the water we drink, and leaves local communities to fend for themselves,” subcommittee ranking member Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) said in a statement.
EPA faces 20 percent cut
The House GOP spending bill would slash into EPA’s funds, but not nearly as much as proposed by the Trump administration.
The agency would receive $7.04 billion in fiscal 2027, resulting in a 20 percent decrease from its enacted annual budget of almost $8.82 billion. The White House’s blueprint slated just $4.2 billion for EPA, which would toss aside more than 50 percent of its funding. The House GOP proposed a similar reduction last year but Congress ultimately trimmed EPA by only 4 percent in fiscal 2026.
House appropriators also refused to follow the president’s lead on the agency’s State and Tribal Assistance Grants, which help fund environmental efforts at the state and local level. The bill would provide $3.7 billion for those grants, a 16 percent cut from current funding, while Trump’s budget plan would almost zero out the program.
Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), chair of the Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee, had hinted the proposed cut was a nonstarter. “You’re not going to see state and tribal grants cut by 83 percent,” Simpson said at a hearing last month.
Lawmakers did match the administration’s request of $290 million for the Superfund program, designed to clean up toxic waste sites. They noted the legislation accounts for “additional funding” from estimated “polluter pay” taxes, according to a Republican bill summary.
EPA’s Science and Technology work would receive $527.94 million, or a 29 percent decrease from enacted funding, while the Environmental Programs and Management account would have $2.29 billion, roughly a 26 percent cut from fiscal 2026.
Although not as drastic as the president’s budget request, Democrats lamented the slashing of EPA’s funding in the spending bill.
“This 20 percent reduction severely impacts investments in environmental justice, enforcement, and climate change activities,” the minority party said in its own bill summary.
Riders would further restrict EPA, such as barring funds for incorporating the social cost of carbon and implementing reporting requirements for farming operations’ greenhouse gas emissions.
The agency has already taken a battering during the Trump administration. Since last year, thousands of employees have left EPA, which has undergone a vast reorganization that closed environmental justice offices and broke apart its prized research program.
Transportation funding also unveiled
House appropriators also released their fiscal 2027 Transportation-HUD bill, proposing a 10.4 percent cut to federal spending on infrastructure, housing and community development.
The Republican majority is proposing to redirect nearly $8 billion from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 away from “wasteful Democrat priorities” and toward safety programs and efforts to make travel more “reliable,” according to a bill summary.
The legislation would shore up air traffic control needs — in part by using $1 billion in unobligated IIJA funds for the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program — and it would boost funding for some highway, airport and maritime infrastructure programs.
The bill also proposes to transfer unobligated infrastructure bill dollars away from the highway projects account and Amtrak, which would see a cut in fiscal 2027 funding under the proposal. The Federal Railroad Administration and the Federal Transit Administration would see most of their funding eliminated.
Democrats criticized the bill, calling the IIJA transfers “unrealistic.” They noted that the legislation would slash the Department of Transportation’s budget by 22 percent, eliminate funding to address lead-based paint hazards from low-income housing units and block the Department of Housing and Urban Development from updating energy efficiency standards for public housing.
Alex Guillén contributed to this report.
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