Wilderness Society, Ocean Conservancy say Trump's budget cuts would harm environment
WASHINGTON — Calling Donald Trump’s budget blueprint an ideological attack that would roll back progress on renewable energy and public health while hollowing out essential protections, environmental groups Thursday urged Congress to reject it.
“Calling this a budget is kind of the equivalent of calling a nuclear attack a disagreement,” said David Goldston, director of government affairs at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “It’s a parody of a budget … It’s an effort to shut down government that acts as a check on corporate behavior or protects the environment.”
He said the danger was not that Congress would approve the proposal but that it “might take this seriously as a point for negotiation.” He called it “an ideological crusade” that “needs to be rejected.”
Trump’s proposal, released Thursday morning, would cut the Environmental Protection Agency by $2.6 billion, or by 31% of this year’s outlay, and cut 3,200 jobs. It would discontinue the agency’s climate change research, reduce Superfund spending by $330 million, and eliminate 50 of what it calls “lower priority and poorly performing programs,” including pesticide screening.
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In the Department of Energy's proposed budget, the new administration would cut the Weatherization Assistance Program and State Energy Program, which Vernice Miller-Travis, the former chairwoman of Maryland’s Commission on Environmental Justice and Sustainable Communities, said will have a disproportionate impact on low-income residents.
The proposal would also eliminate the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education Program in the Department of Agriculture budget. The program sent food aid to an estimated 2.26 million people in nine food-deficient countries, including Haiti and Guatemala, at a cost of $195.5 million in 2016.
Trump said his “America First” budget blueprint is aimed to “reprioritize federal spending so that it advances the safety and security of the American people.”
In a 90-minute conference call with reporters organized by the NRDC and Defenders of Wildlife, spokesmen for “green” groups decried the direction the proposed budget would take environmental policy.
Scott Slesinger, legislative director for the NRDC, said the proposed 31% cut to the EPA, following a 20% reduction in its budgets since 2010, was a “cynical” effort “by right-wing ideologues” that “will take the cop off the beat.”
“This may be a good budget for polluters, not for American families,” Slesinger said.
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Speaking of Trump’s proposed 12% cut for the Department of the Interior, Cameron Witten, a government relations specialist at the Wilderness Society, said it would “wholly undermine” public land policy in the areas of fisheries, renewable energy and outdoor and wildlife resources.
“This budget undermines that heritage … and it makes no economic sense,” Witten said.
Addie Haughey, a government relations expert with Ocean Conservancy, said proposed cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the Department of Commerce budget sends the message that “our ocean — the engine that drives an economy worth $359 billion and supports millions of people — (is) not a priority for the Trump administration.”
Defenders of Wildlife CEO Jamie Rappaport Clark was not on Thursday’s call but in a prepared statement called Trump’s budget proposal "a sellout of our nation’s wildlife heritage.”
“We owe it to our children and grandchildren to be good stewards of our environment and leave behind a legacy of protecting our natural resources,” Clark said.