Trump Pushes For Massive Budget, Staff Cuts At EPA

The Daily Caller discusses President Trump cutting the EPA’s budget with Myron Ebell.

A source informed of the budget plans told E&E News Trump will push for a nearly $2 billion cut to EPA’s $8.1 billion budget. A source told Politico Trump also “proposed reducing EPA’s 15,000-strong workforce to 12,000, a level not seen since the mid-1980s.”

“You’re going to have to make reductions,” Myron Ebell, director of global warming and energy policy at the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

“There’s going to have to be some serious thought here,” said Ebell, who headed Trump’s EPA transition team. “They’re going to have to figure out to make these cuts.”

Trump’s plan to cut EPA’ budget 24 percent mirrors recommendations given to him by the agency transition team. That plan advised cuts outside of state and tribal grants, which make up about 43 percent of EPA’s budget.

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Ebell said Trump will likely cut EPA climate programs, like he promised on the campaign trail, but could also end up laying off agency staffers in D.C. or reduce the size of field offices. Top officials told Axios to expect “massive, transformational cuts, particularly to climate-change programs.”

“Businesses have to do this all the time,” Ebell said.“The federal government never has to undergo this market discipline.”

Read the full article at The Daily Caller.