Senate appropriators clashed repeatedly with EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin during a Wednesday hearing that featured bipartisan objections to White House plans to impose the steepest spending cut in agency history.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), chair of the Senate Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee, first questioned whether the Trump administration was serious about some of its proposed program cuts, then added: “I find many of them problematic.”
Offering a more barbed critique was Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), the panel’s ranking member, who accused the administration of putting polluter profits ahead of the public interest. Its bare-bones draft budget is “scant on details,” Merkley said. “It denigrates science. It antagonizes federal employees.”
If enacted, the budget proposal would slash the agency’s core funding by more than half, from $9.1 billion this year to $4.2 billion in fiscal 2026. Even before accounting for inflation’s effects, that latter number would be the lowest level since 1986, EPA figures show.
