Andy Maggi
The spending deal signed into law by President Trump last month has staved off the latest threats of a government shutdown. It also protected Nevadans from some of the worst proposals the administration made on the environment. Both of Nevada’s senators, Dean Heller and Catherine Cortez Masto, voted for the proposal.
The latest offer for a long term budget deal from the Trump administration was another attempt to eliminate public health protections. President Donald Trump and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt were pursuing severe and unnecessary budget cuts to the EPA, which would have hamstring the agency’s ability to protect Americans from pollutants like smog, mercury, arsenic, carbon pollution and methane. At the same time, Trump proposed to prop up their polluting cronies by slashing Department of Energy funding for researching safer, cleaner and cheaper renewable energy.
Thankfully Congress had a clearer mind. Trump’s latest budget proposal would have cut the EPA by 34 percent. These cuts would have gone directly to the divisions within EPA that regulates some of our nation’s biggest sources of pollution. The amount of civil penalties polluters paid for breaking the law has dropped by nearly half under Pruitt’s tenure. Pruitt and Trump were trying to slash funding that makes prosecuting criminal polluters possible. Instead of following the direction of Trump and Pruitt, Congress kept EPA funding at current levels. Even cuts to the Department of Energy’s research were avoided, and many research programs within the DOE saw an increase in funding.
Pruitt has come under fire lately for lavish travel expenses, including a trip to Italy costing taxpayers more than $40,000 and a single-day of chartered flights in Oklahoma totaling $14,000, bringing the known amount of taxpayer money spent on travel during his first few months at the EPA to more than $100,000. This is in addition to a nearly $43,000 spent on biometric locks to Pruitt’s office.
Instead of reining in Pruitt’s excessive spending, Trump’s budget proposed slashing the EPA’S inspector general’s office by nearly $4 million. Cuts to the inspector general’s office would decimate its ability to investigate ethical lapses and improper conduct, including its current investigations into Pruitt’s travel expenses. Again, Congress rejected these proposals and kept funding intact for the inspector general.
Trump’s budget proposed going even further in targeting Nevada. He wanted to remove the remaining $230 million from the Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act budget for conservation projects. This was immediately opposed by Nevada’s entire congressional delegation. In 1998, Nevada’s congressional delegation worked to pass the act to ensure that the money from federally managed land sales was used within Southern Nevada (essentially the greater Las Vegas Metropolitan area) for conservation projects or to acquire environmentally sensitive lands. In total, $3.4 billion has been raised this way for more than 1,200 conservation projects such as the Springs Preserve, campgrounds on Mount Charleston and the moving of docks on Lake Mead. The good news is that the management act’s funds were protected in the latest spending deal.
Trump’s budget proposal even contained $150 million to restart the licensing program for Yucca Mountain. This would have been the first step toward once again trying to bring the entire nation’s supply of nuclear waste to Nevada, despite the fact there are no nuclear power plants in the state. If Yucca Mountain would be permitted for nuclear waste, then trains and trucks carrying extremely radioactive material would be moving through southern Nevada, close to several key tourist areas, every day for decades. This funding was also left out of the latest spending deal.
The latest budget deal was a victory for Nevada’s environment. While we would like to see more funding go toward renewable energy, environmental protection, and public lands, we managed to avoid the dramatic cuts that would have harmed Nevadans. However, Trump doesn’t seem to have learned how unpopular his proposals are in Nevada. The president’s 2019 budget once again proposes all of these cuts that would harm Nevada’s environment. We hope when that comes up for debate that we will have bipartisan opposition.