The package would give the EPA $8.1 billion, $31.2 million below enacted levels, the Senate Appropriations Committee said in a bill summary. The Interior Department would be funded at $12.2 billion, including a $6 million increase for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and a $11.9 million cut to the Fish and Wildlife Service. The legislation would decrease the budget for Interior's Office of Surface Mining (OSM) by $3.7 million.
The riders are important to Republicans, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said in a statement announcing her intention to include several in the package. But Democrats expressed disappointment with the decision. "In many ways, I feel like its de´ja` vu all over again, and it's very frustrating," Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., said of the riders.
"Democrats have been clear; the White House has been clear," Udall warned. "We are not prepared to gut environmental law at the price of getting spending bills passed."
One policy rider would delay implementation of EPA's waters of the US (WOTUS) for one year, Murkowski said, and another would bar Superfund financial assurance rulemaking.
"On the regulatory side of the EPA budget, this bill makes cuts in areas where the EPA has clearly overstepped its bounds," Murkowski said. "Several program areas that have issued controversial rules that are currently blocked in court are reduced because I believe it is more important to provide resources to programs that yield tangible results in improving the environment instead of funding more lawyers and bureaucrats to draft rules of questionable legality and dubious environmental benefit."