November 11, 2020 — The Republican-led Senate is proposing modest spending increases for environmental agencies compared to last year’s budget, diverging from proposed cuts that the Trump White House put forward earlier this year.
In its $38 billion Interior-environment spending bill for fiscal 2021, the Senate Appropriations Committee proposed giving about $13.6 billion to the Interior Department and about $9.09 billion to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
That’s up from the $13.5 billion given to Interior last year and the about $9.06 billion appropriated for the EPA in the last fiscal year. The Senate has also proposed increasing the Energy Department’s budget to about $42 billion, an approximately $3.45 billion increase over last year.
The Democrat-led House has also proposed increases for these agencies.
The push by Congress to increase funding for the agencies comes after the White House in February called for cutting the EPA’s budget by 26 percent, the Interior budget by 16 percent and the Energy Department budget by 8 percent.