Interior Secretary Doug Burgum sparred with House Democrats on Monday as he pushed back complaints that not only is the Trump administration unfairly hindering renewable energy production but at the same time is causing energy prices to spike.
Members of the House Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee fired a battery of questions at Burgum in his first appearance on Capitol Hill in nearly a year.
During that absence, the Trump administration has proposed major overhauls of the Interior Department, including steep staffing cuts at agencies like the National Park Service, a merger of all federal firefighting forces and a bid to recombine two offshore energy agencies that were bifurcated in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The White House is seeking to slash Interior’s funding by nearly 13 percent in fiscal 2027.
“The future that this administration envisions with this budget proposal is one of fewer national parks, shrinking public lands, more endangered species, dirtier air and water and higher profits for fossil fuel executives — who are the only people who stand to benefit from these disasters,” said Appropriations ranking member Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.).
Democrats also hit on Burgum’s wide range of activities as Interior secretary, which include chairing the National Energy Dominance Council, being a frequent mouthpiece for the administration’s policies on television and traveling abroad to Venezuela, Europe and Asia to pursue energy and minerals deals.
“What does bringing back a case of gold from Venezuela have to do with the [Interior] mission?” asked Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), ranking member of the House Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee.
Burgum will appear again later this week before Senate appropriators.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright will testify Tuesday before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin is due on the Hill next week.
Renewable energy
Democrats Monday were most concerned over Burgum’s efforts to sideline renewable energy, which he panned during the hearing as unreliable and expensive if not propped up by taxpayer subsidies.
“It feels to me like this department is putting a thumb on its scale,” said Josh Harder (D-Calif.), noting that wind and solar projects need approval from Burgum’s office to move forward, while fossil fuel projects have no such requirement. “What I see now is secretary-level approval required for one type of project, but not for another. And again, I don’t think that’s sustainable — or good — policy.”
Burgum responded that solar has “supply chain security” issues and compared the industry’s reliance on imported parts to concerns about Chinese technology giant Huawei.
Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas) praised the administration’s crackdown on offshore wind in particular, arguing that the wind projects along the Atlantic coast represented a national security risk.
“I appreciate what you’re doing with wind,” Cloud said, asserting that turbine towers can interfere with radar. “They complicate tracking of aircraft. You could also say missiles as well.”
Burgum similarly said the projects would make the East Coast vulnerable to a “drone swarm attack” or undersea attack.
Many national security experts are highly skeptical of the administration’s arguments, as each project went through military reviews. Several countries, particularly in Europe, have built offshore wind fleets and mitigated the effects turbines have on radar.
Democrats on Monday pressed for more details: “I would like to see all these national security arguments,” said Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), expressing doubts about national security being a viable justification to deny renewable projects like offshore wind, while also being used by the administration to justify clearing mining restrictions near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness so a foreign company can advance its plan to mine for copper.
Burgum insisted that the Trump administration does support alternative energy sources, like nuclear power, geothermal and hydropower. He said a $928 million agreement last month with TotalEnergies, a French energy company, to cancel offshore wind lease areas off of New York and North Carolina happened because the company saw “themselves as being ineligible to build” on their leases.
Department reorganization
Democrats panned Interior’s planned unification of two offshore energy agencies that were split apart in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement share management responsibility for offshore energy, in particular oil and gas. They were created in 2011 after the Deepwater Horizon incident resulted in 11 deaths and millions of barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico.
Burgum defended his department’s remarriage of the two agencies, asserting, “It’s not about cutting corners.”
Pingree questioned how Interior would address concerns raised about the combined agency in the wake of the 2010 spill, especially as the department has proposed relaxing some requirements for blowout preventers, a safety device on underwater wells which failed on the Deepwater Horizon rig.
Burgum denied that the agency was “rolling anything back” and said the merger would improve safety because it would ensure federal personnel are “present during the inspections of those blowout preventers specifically.”
Internal and external reviews after the disaster concluded that the combined agencies, previously within the Minerals Management Service, resulted in lax enforcement of safety and environmental regulations, and that its functions should be split apart. The author of a report about management of offshore waters called Interior’s plan to recombine the agencies “exceedingly reckless.”
But Burgum tried to dispute that reviews of what led to Deepwater Horizon “showed that there was an issue, and therefore these agencies should be broken up.”
“It didn’t say that,” Burgum said. “It said there weren’t enough inspections.”
Energy prices
Several lawmakers pressed Burgum on rising energy prices.
“The American people sense that this administration is out of touch while the cost of living continues to climb, while the price of gas, groceries, utilities and everyday goods goes up and up,” DeLauro said, blaming fossil fuel reliance and conflict in the Middle East.
“What should I be telling my constituents when they tell me that they can’t afford to fill up at the pump?” Harder asked, noting gas prices in California as high as $8 a gallon.
Burgum skirted Harder’s question to instead focus on California, noting that the state — once the largest producer of oil in the country — imports the majority of its oil for refining from foreign nations, including Iraq, Brazil and Canada.
“California became Hawaii,” he said. “They turned themselves into an energy island.”
National parks
Democrats were unimpressed with Burgum’s proposal to cut to the National Park Service budget by more than $1 billion.
“If these cuts are implemented, more and more people will arrive at our national parks, they will find them mismanaged, unsafe, or shut down entirely due to lack of resources,” DeLauro said.
She pointed to the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, the short-lived Elon Musk-led effort to slash government bloat, which cost thousands of NPS jobs.
“NPS was among the federal agencies that was hardest hit by this destruction,” DeLauro said, noting estimates from the National Parks Conservation Association that the service lost roughly a quarter of its staff since the end of the Biden administration.
Burgum rebutted that assessment: “The [argument] that there was a massive reduction in the parks or anywhere across Interior related to DOGE is simply not factual.”
The only DOGE cuts at the park service came from the firing of probationary workers, he said. A federal judge ordered the department to reinstate those employees. But Interior has previously disclosed that roughly 1,600 NPS staff also left last year as part of the administration’s offers of early retirement and deferred resignations.
Rep. Jake Ellzey (R-Texas) pressed Burgum on funding to fix up parks, noting signs of decay and disrepair during a recent trip to Fort Washington Park in Maryland. Burgum said the agency’s maintenance backlog is currently over $35 billion.
“If we can’t fix these and make them look like they are supposed to, then we ought to shut them down until they are fixed,” Ellzey said of parks.
Burgum said Fort Washington would be one of the parks in and around the nation’s capital that could benefit from the $10 billion “Presidential Capital Stewardship Program” proposed by the White House earlier this month.
Lawmakers are also working to reauthorize the Great American Outdoors Act to free up new funding for the land and parks maintenance backlog, but the parties and chambers are far apart on a way forward.
Reporter James Bikales contributed to this report.
