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Here are some EPA programs that Scott Pruitt’s $900,000 taxpayer-funded expenses could pay for .
Scott Pruitt wants to cut waste at the EPA. Here's what he could save by cutting his own expenses.
Here are some EPA programs that Scott Pruitt’s $900,000 taxpayer-funded expenses could pay for
Scott Pruitt wants to cut waste at the EPA. Here's what he could save by cutting his own expenses.
NATASHA GEILING
SEP 29, 2017, 9:24 AM
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(CREDIT: AP PHOTO/PABLO MARTINEZ MONSIVAIS)
Since assuming office in late February, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has spent upwards of $900,000 of taxpayer dollars on extraneous expenses, including round-the-clock personal security, private chartered and military flights, and a soundproof booth for his office.
Such spending offers a stark contrast to the rhetoric of the former Oklahoma attorney general, who is a staunch proponent of small government and fiscal conservatism. Moreover, since coming to the agency, Pruitt has publicly espoused a philosophy of deep austerity for the EPA, arguing that the agency should work to do more with less by partnering more efficiently with state agencies and private industry. He defended the Trump administration’s proposed 31 percent cut to the agency, telling members of Congress that he feels the EPA can “fulfill the mission of our agency with a trim budget.” And he’s championed cutting programs he deems a waste of taxpayer dollars, like spending less than $15,000 for 37 employees to use a private gym for a year — at an average cost of $34/month per person. Pruitt ended that program in April of this year, saying that “it was quite something to hear about that.”
But it’s not just gym memberships that are on the chopping block in Pruitt’s EPA: The Trump administration’s proposed budget call for deep cuts to programs in everything from environmental enforcement to environmental justice, programs funded by grants and research that often carry a much lower price-tag that Pruitt’s private flights and security.
Lavish spending on Scott Pruitt runs counter to Trump’s plan to slash EPA’s budget
For $900,000, for instance, the EPA could fund at least 30 projects through the Environmental Justice Small Grants program to help vulnerable communities deal with environmental issues. Past projects include community education programs about air pollution, weatherizing homes for better energy efficiency in low-income communities, and testing drinking wells for contamination in rural areas. It could also easily pay for the $544,000 Superfund portion of the EPA’s Environmental Justice program, which focuses on environmental issues facing low-income and minority communities that live near extremely polluted Superfund sites.
Both of those programs were cut entirely under the Trump budget. The House budget, which is expected to be taken up by the Senate in October, cuts funding to the overall environmental justice program by $1 million, but the specific programmatic cuts have not yet been identified. The House budget restored some funding to the EPA — over Pruitt’s objection — but still cuts the agency by 6.5 percent, a 20 percent decrease since Republicans took control of the House in 2010.
The $900,000 in taxpayer dollars that Pruitt spent on private travel, security, and a soundproof booth for his office could almost have paid for the entire South Florida Geographic Initiative, which funds water monitoring programs in sensitive South Florida ecosystems like the Everglades and the Florida Keys. Marine scientists worry that the Everglades are especially vulnerable in the wake of Hurricane Irma, which caused widespread destruction to seagrass beds in the area. That program is entirely cut in both the Trump and House budgets.
Scott Pruitt spent $12,000 in taxpayer money to travel back to Oklahoma
Pruitt’s expenses could have paid for for several climate and science programs that were completely zeroed out in the Trump administration’s proposed budget, such as the Office of Science and Technology’s $209,000 program to reduce risks from indoor air pollution, or the $172,000 Radon Program, which helps study the public health impacts of the lung cancer-causing radon gas in homes.
It could almost pay for the $1,172,000 Science Policy and Biotechnology program in Pesticides Licensing that the administration proposed eliminating. That program provides scientific and policy expertise about pesticides and toxic chemicals — the kind of science that helped the EPA identify the widely-used pesticide chlorpyrifos as capable of causing brain damage in children. (Despite internal research, Pruitt decided to reject calls to ban the pesticide in March.) His superfluous spending would nearly cover the administration’s proposed $977,000 cut to the Office of Science and Technology’s pesticide program meant to protect human health and ecosystems from the impact of pesticides.
It would pay for the administration’s proposed cuts to the EPA’s Superfund program, which deals with cleaning up some of the nation’s most toxic sites — places like former munitions plants or lead factories, where pollution is so bad that the surrounding air, water, and soil poses a threat to human health. Pruitt has said that cleaning up Superfund sites is a major priority of his, but the Trump budget proposes a $406,000 cut to the program’s emergency preparedness program, which helps the agency respond to discharges or releases from Superfund sites caused by natural or environmental disasters. Earlier this month in Houston, flooding from Hurricane Harvey inundated at least seven Superfund sites in the area.
Pruitt’s taxpayer-funded spending could have paid for a slew of EPA grants, from a grant meant to help tribal communities adapt to climate change ($600,000), to grants meant to help rural and tribal communities along the border access clean drinking water ($870,000). It could pay for grants under the EPA’s Nonpoint Source Program, which helps state and tribal partners create and implement programs meant to clean up polluted or degraded rivers, creeks, streams, and wetlands (one grant, issued in 2016, gave Alabama $255,000 to clean up Black Branch and Cane Creek, which had been listed as degraded waterways since 1998).
Tom Price took military jets abroad, bringing total cost of travel to more than $1 million
It would pay 30 times over for a $30,000 grant awarded to Cleveland State University in 2015 to help fund water pollution research. And it would be enough to fund a $125,000 grant awarded to the Alaskan village of Port Heiden, an indigenous community threatened by climate change-fueled sea level rise and coastal erosion, more than seven times.
Pruitt’s use of taxpayer funds has come under scrutiny before — he’s already being investigated by the EPA’s Office of Inspector General over whether he misused taxpayer dollars for his frequent trips home to Oklahoma. According to EPA records and travel stubs, Pruitt spent 43 days in a three-month period traveling back to his home state, running up a tab of $12,000. On Wednesday, three Democratic lawmakers on the Energy and Commerce Committee the EPA to extend its investigation to Pruitt’s use of taxpayer dollars for private and military flights, calling it “just the latest example of repeated and blatant abuse of taxpayer funds by the Trump administration.”
#CLIMATE, #ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES, #SCOTT PRUITT, #TRUMP ADMINISTRATION
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On Capitol Hill, EPA chief gets an earful about Trump’s ‘downright offensive’ budget plan.
Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike pushed back at the administration's proposed cuts at the agency.
Another trip to Capitol Hill for Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, another reminder that lawmakers from both parties have no intention of approving the deep cuts President Trump is seeking at the agency.
Pruitt heard a familiar sentiment Tuesday from both Republican and Democratic members of a Senate Appropriations Committee — that a proposed 31 percent cut to EPA isn’t going to happen, and that shuttering key programs and laying off thousands of employees conflicts with the Trump administration’s stated goals about safeguarding the nation’s air and water.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) noted that while she supports Pruitt’s approach of focusing on the EPA’s central responsibilities while steering away from the climate policies of the Obama administration, the current budget proposal is “in direct contrast” to such an approach. She singled out aid to Alaska Native villages and a radon detection program as areas that have proven to save and improve lives.
“We have rejected changes like these in past, and I will certainly push my colleagues to do so again this year,” Murkowski said.
Democrats were even more blunt.
“The budget request before us today is downright offensive,” Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) said as he cited a litany of programs slated for elimination or massive cuts. “I can’t square this with your rhetoric about returning EPA to its core responsibilities. Nothing was spared. EPA’s core is hollowed out … These cuts aren’t an intent to rein in spending, they are an intentional step to undermine science and ignore environmental and public health realities.”
Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) called the Trump administration’s proposal “really the worst I’ve seen.”
“This budget that you’ve proposed doesn’t uphold your agency’s mission,” Leahy said. “We ought to be doubling down on our investment to protect our environment for the sake of our children and grandchildren. We ought to curb the effects of climate change. Instead, the administration is tearing down the legacy of the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act.”
Tuesday’s hearing came after another on in the House earlier this month, in which Pruitt encountered similar resistance from both sides of the aisle. At each hearing, he defended the White House proposal, saying the agency could still live up to its mission with proper management, better leadership and less waste.
The Trump administration would reduce EPA’s funding by $2.4 billion annually — a larger percentage cut than at any other federal agency. The White House wants to shrink the agency’s workforce by thousands of people and sharply reduce or end a variety of national and regional programs.
The Trump administration has proposed nearly halving grants that support state and local efforts to address everything from pesticide exposure to air and water quality. It would slash nearly one-third of funding for Superfund cleanups — though Pruitt has insisted that he will prioritize the program, which help restore some of the nation’s most polluted sites.
Dozens of other programs would be zeroed out entirely, including funding for radon detection, lead-risk reduction, environmental justice and projects along the U.S.-Mexico border. Also slated for elimination are efforts aimed at restoring the Great Lakes, Chesapeake Bay and Puget Sound. Plus the agency would have fewer funds for prosecuting environmental crimes or researching climate change and other issues.
On Tuesday, senators from both parties pressed Pruitt to live up to his promises to improve Superfund cleanups, to support cleanup efforts of the Chesapeake Bay and to maintain scientific integrity at the agency. They questioned his decision to reject the agency’s own analysis in declining to ban a pesticide called chlorpyrifos, as well as the agency’s decision to remove key parts of EPA’s climate change website.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) questioned Pruitt about the agency’s unusual decision to not renew the terms of dozens of scientific advisers.
“None of those folks have been fired. Those individuals can reapply for spots,” Pruitt said, noting that the advisory boards need more geographic diversity.
Udall pointed out that while the Trump administration has proposed shedding 3,200 employees from the EPA — nearly a quarter of its workforce — Congress will have the ultimate say on funding. Given that the agency has begun a buyout process aimed at up to 1,200 employees by the end of the summer, Udall asked for Pruitt’s word that the administration would not try to circumvent the wishes of Congress and continue to shrink the agency unless directed by lawmakers.
“There are no pink slips being issued at the agency,” Pruitt assured him, saying the reduction in workers is happening primarily through attrition, a hiring freeze and voluntary buyouts. “We respect the role of Congress in that regard.”
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A beleaguered EPA has become ground zero in Trump's war on science.
Few federal agencies would entirely escape the meat cleaver in President Trump’s proposed budget, but none is facing more devastating cuts than the Environmental Protection Agency.
Few federal agencies would entirely escape the meat cleaver in President Trump’s proposed budget, but none is facing more devastating cuts than the Environmental Protection Agency.
The agency would suffer a 31% cut in the budget that was released late last month, to $5.7 billion — that’s from previous spending that already was cut to the bone. Some 25% of its workforce would be lopped off, leaving it the smallest it has been since 1982. Fifty-six specific monitoring, enforcement, regulatory and research programs — greenhouse gas reporting, indoor radon monitoring, water quality research grants, pollution cleanup programs from Chesapeake Bay to San Francisco Bay, state grants for clean water and air programs — would be zeroed out.
Because two major programs — providing state revolving funds for clean water and drinking water infrastructure — would be untouched, the rest of the agency would suffer an effective cut of 42%.
“This seems like a full-frontal attack,” says Ruth Greenspan Bell, a former EPA attorney and an organizer of the Environmental Protection Network, a group of former EPA employees devoted to fighting the attack. This week, the EPN sounded the alarm that the proposed budget would cut spending on science by nearly half — a cut that would undermine almost every function in the agency’s portfolio.
“Everything at EPA is so intertwined,” Bell says. “Science is tied into the regulatory process, permitting, enforcement. It’s not just a bunch of people in lab coats.”
The EPN’s critique certainly isn’t the first aimed at Trump’s EPA budget. When details first began to emerge in March, Gina McCarthy, the last EPA administrator under President Obama, called it “literally and figuratively … a scorched-earth budget that represents an all-out assault on clean air, water and land.” Some proposed cuts are even deeper than they were in the March version.
But the urgency is greater now. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, a former Oklahoma attorney general who made his name filing lawsuits against the agency for the benefit of the oil and gas industry, will have to account for these cuts in testimony Thursday before the House Appropriations Committee. It’s doubtful that the committee members will delve too deeply into the ramifications of the cuts — they’re too vast and their consequences too far-reaching.
Here are a few items pinpointed by the Environmental Protection Network in its budget analysis:
The elimination of most climate change programs, including those that facilitate greenhouse gas reporting, the Energy Star program rating consumer product for energy efficiency, and partnerships aimed at encouraging the use of renewable energy.
Cuts totaling $678 million in state, local and tribal grants for air and water pollution programs, pesticide control, wetlands restoration, beach protection and lead programs.
The elimination of geographic programs including cleanup of the Chesapeake Bay ($73 million), the Great Lakes ($299 million) and San Francisco Bay ($4.8 million).
On the other side of the ledger, the budget reserves $68 million for what it terms “workforce reshaping.” The EPN aptly labels this an “Orwellian euphemism” for the buyouts and layoff costs incurred in cutting 3,805 full-time equivalents from its current payroll of 15,416.
To EPA veterans like Bell, the atmosphere surrounding the agency is reminiscent of the reign of Anne Gorsuch, Ronald Reagan’s first EPA administrator (and the mother of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch). Appointed in 1982, Gorsuch lasted barely two years because of her own scorched-earth approach, which included a 25% budget cut and the elimination of 30% of the workforce. Like Pruitt, her policy aimed to roll back a decade or more of environmental progress. But her morale-sapping approach made her job all the more difficult.
As a member of the general counsel’s office then, Bell recalls, “We spent a tremendous amount of time trying to throw our bodies between some pretty irrational and difficult political folks and the staff. We wanted the staff to stay there for the future of the institution.”
The EPA's workforce peaked in 2011, but its work load has not ebbed. (EPA)
What’s curious about all these cuts is that they’re likely to undermine Trump’s and Pruitt’s oft-expressed intention to roll back existing EPA regulations. “You can’t change rules with the flick of a pen,” Bell says. “You need tons of resources to do that” — including lawyers and scientists to create a record justifying the revision or elimination of regulations that in some cases have been in place for decades.
Yet even if they can’t achieve their immediate objectives, the danger is that they’ll hamstring the agency’s work for years to come. Mass layoffs will be targeted at the youngest, most recently hired employees being trained for the future.
“They’re the seed corn,” says George Wyeth, a former EPA lawyer who left the agency in January after 27 years and helped organize the EPN. Gorsuch, Bell recalls, was succeeded by William Ruckelshaus, who tried to reverse the damage Gorsuch had caused, but it was a long-term project. “There were bruises,” Bell says. “You don’t just pick up the pieces.”
Wyeth adds that the cuts being proposed now will squeeze harder on an agency that long has been underfunded. The EPA’s recent budget peak came in 2010 at $10.3 billion. It fell more than 20% to $8.2 billion in 2016-17. The workforce’s recent peak came in 2011, at 17,494 full-time equivalents; Trump’s recommendation cutting that to 11,611 would mean a drop by more than one-third.
“The natural thing is to assume we’ll get a cut between 31% and zero, so a cut of 10% would be OK,” Wyeth says. “But the budget has been in a downward spiral. Everything that’s grown in the agency has had to come out of something else.”
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There's finally a dollar amount attached to how much Trump hates the EPA.
The Trump proposal is not going to survive congressional appropriations intact, but the numbers are instructive about where the administration's true priorities lie.
President Donald Trump reserves a special level of antipathy for the Environmental Protection Agency. He campaigned on eliminating the EPA "in almost every form," and his budget director, Mick Mulvaney, declared that its climate change programs "waste your money." But his full budget wish list released Tuesday actually assigns a dollar value to his promises. In it, the EPA faces the steepest cut of any agency or department across the government, a 31.4 percent reduction to its $5.7 billion budget, its lowest level in 40 years.
The Trump proposal is not going to survive congressional appropriations intact, but the numbers are instructive about where the administration's true priorities lie. "Everyone believes in and supports safe food supplies and clean air and water," the budget document declares, "but the agencies of the Federal Government have gone way beyond what was originally intended by the Congress."
Far from redirecting the EPA away from climate change to its "core responsibilities" of preserving air and water quality, as Trump and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt have promised, the budget would slash an assortment of these "core" initiatives—including energy efficiency, clean air, clean water, infrastructure, and state initiatives. The EPA 2016 workforce of 15,376 is already down 3,000 employees from where it stood in 1999. If enacted, these budget cuts would potentially reduce its staffing by at least 3,000 more.
The Superfund program, responsible for cleaning up more than 1,300 of the dirtiest and most hazardous industrial sites around the country, took one of the biggest hits in sheer dollars, with Superfund spending reduced by 25 percent, or $330 million. The rationale is this would "optimize the use of existing settlement funds for sites" and identify barriers "preventing sites from returning to communities." On conservative radio, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has called Superfund responsibilities "some of the most important work that we do as an agency, or should be doing," claiming he can clean up these sites faster while also streamlining, or reducing, their numbers. Yet Superfund experts don't see how any kind of progress is possible when the program faces such draconian cuts. "The pace of cleanup at Superfund sites is directly related to available resources," emailed David Konisky, an environmental policy professor at Indiana University who authored a book about the Superfund program. "The proposed budgets cuts would drastically impair EPA’s ability to cleanup existing sites and to address new sites that need remediation."
Under Trump's budget, dozens of programs, from environmental justice to radon detection, are eliminated. A variety of projects that focus on environmental cleanup for the Great Lakes, Chesapeake Bay, Puget Sound, and more, are zeroed out. Energy Star, a relatively small program that rates energy efficient products and properties, is gone. The White House justifies cutting the popular energy efficiency program by saying, "There is no need for EPA to administer voluntary partnership and certification programs like Energy Star with taxpayer dollars, given the popularity and significant private benefits these programs provide to industry partners and consumers."
The EPA's scientific research and development is also cut by half, which the White House claims will free the program to concentrate its research on "statutory requirements" and basic research on environment and human health. That doesn't just threaten climate research, but research that underpins agency decisions on pollution and pesticide regulation.
Pruitt has often invoked the term "cooperative federalism" to argue that the federal government should stand back and let states take the lead on environmental priorities. Yet the budget also slashes the EPA's state categorical grants, which help states tackle air and water problems, by nearly half.
Michael Mikulka, EPA staffer and President of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 704 union representing 900 EPA workers in the Region 5 office, argues the budget delivers a double blow to environmental and health initiatives, not just by cutting federal spending on enforcement (by $129 million) but by cutting state grants as well. "States were asking for EPA assistance previously, under the current level of funding," says Mikulka. "So I don't see how states are going to pick up the slack by cutting the funding, while also realizing there's no backstop. The states have nowhere they can ask for federal help."
While the EPA is the prime target in Trump's budget, environmental programs in other agencies are also slashed. The Department of Interior sees nearly an 11 percent cut, the Department of Energy faces an 18 percent cut for its non-nuclear spending, the State Department's climate aid is zeroed out, and NASA's Earth science satellites, including measurements of carbon dioxide, get no funding. The Department of Agriculture's wastewater treatment grants are deemed "duplicative" and also cut.
All told, Trump is generous with the Defense budget, giving it a boost of $52 billion, while drastically cutting non-military domestic spending (by $57 billion), which includes the tiny portion of the federal budget that goes to fighting climate change.
Mikulka summed up the budget cuts as "a travesty" for the environment and notes "we’ll be putting people at risk." But he did get one less grim piece of news today. The White House Office of Management and Budget floated the idea back in March of eliminating two entire EPA regional offices, and rumor had it that officials eyed Chicago's Region 5 office as one of them. Tuesday morning, Mikulka says the regional administrator informed him that closing Region 5 was off the table. For the time being, it's safe.
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