House Republicans yesterday unveiled key pieces of their proposed budget for the remainder of the fiscal year, and their deep and targeted cuts reveal the party leaders are more concerned with anti-government rhetoric than with safeguarding Americans’ health and economic competitiveness.
Drafting a budget is about choices, not arithmetic, and the leaders of the Republican Party have made clear what they favor. They choose going soft on polluters instead of protecting Americans from dangerous toxins. And they choose subsidizing dirty fossil fuels instead of promoting research into the cleaner energy technologies that will make America competitive.
This is not an abstract exercise; Americans will feel these choices in our everyday lives. The House will debate the proposed budget next week, and that debate will be critically important in determining what kind of future Americans will have.
People value the services and protections government agencies provide. In fact, two-thirds of Americans say “the EPA needs to do more to hold polluters accountable and protect the air and water,” according to a new poll. Cuts like those proposed in the budget are out of step with the public. Yet Members of Congress associated with the Tea Party are complaining that the cuts don’t go far enough; they want the amount cut from federal programs to be almost tripled.
So what would be cut under this budget proposal? Does it focus on programs that are unneeded or lack public support? Hardly. Instead, it cuts agencies like the Food Safety and Inspection Services, which would be hobbled despite last year’s egg recall because of salmonella and ongoing concerns about E-coli in beef and spinach.
At EPA, the cuts include the funds that provide money for states and localities to build sewage treatment facilities and to improve their drinking water. Not only do these funds keep raw sewage out of our rivers and off our beaches, they create jobs. The money is spent on construction projects that state and local officials have determined are important.
The proposed budget also includes major cuts in research on offshore wind power, concentrated solar plants, next generation biofuels, and energy efficiency technologies. Advances in clean energy will make our air safer to breathe, give America a competitive advantage, and generate hundreds of thousands of jobs. Yet House Republicans are so ideologically opposed to the idea of the government promoting energy research that they are blind to these benefits—even as they ride the train lines, drive the highways, and surf the Internet that previous generations of lawmakers had the wisdom to invest in.
But House Republicans haven’t stopped at denying clean energy research funds. They are also protecting fossil fuel subsidies. They have devised rules for the budget debate that put off limits any spending on defense and any subsidies that are provided through the tax system. President Obama called for ending fossil fuel subsidies in the State of the Union Address, but the House Republicans rules would make it impossible to even consider this next week. It’s hard to cut the budget responsibly when much of the budget isn’t even on the table.
Worse still, the budget released yesterday is only the beginning. Under pressure from the Tea Party, the House Republicans in charge of spending are going to release a revised proposal in the next day or so with even deeper cuts. And lawmakers are likely to add provisions that block agencies from enforcing specific safeguards or laws. These are basically legislative earmarks – provisions to help a particular industry despite what the underlying law says. For example, a provision could say that cement kilns don’t have to abide by updated clean air standards.
Maneuvers like this will put people’s health at risk. NRDC understands that the deficit needs to be reduced and everyone will have to make some sacrifice. But this budget proposal is not about shared sacrifice or a considered review about what programs are effective. Instead, the budget proposal is an ideological crusade aimed at programs that safeguard citizens and invest in innovative technology. It is an attempt to use legitimate concern about the deficit to fundamentally alter what services and protections the government can provide for the American public.
This post originally appeared on NRDC's Switchboard blog.
There is NO cost to taxpayers other than the 30% tax credit (Big Solar and Big Wind are getting billions in taxpayer CASH and tens of billions in taxpayer loans plus getting to destroy taxpayer land and deplete taxpayer water sources) and the PACE loans are also risk-free because the lender gets first lien and the borrower gets to pass on any remaining payments to the next owner of the property when they move.
Never mind the massive spike in GHG emissions and dead species and ecosystems Big Solar and Big Wind will cause, you are also ripping off taxpayers and ratepayers in about 50 ways, all just to add unneeded parasites who manipulate energy supplies and prices, into the energy chain. It is wrong on every single level, more comparable to a "dead end street" than what we need which is "the internet" - decentralized, dynamic, redundant, reliable, democratically-owned, and located where the services are needed - IN THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT.
So, will you keep fighting for Chevron, BP and Goldman Sachs or will you start fighting for America, the planet and people?
In 2000 the last year of President Clinton the EPA's budget was ~ $7.6 billion in 2010 it was $10.5 billion! That's a 38% increase. You can't cover that with inflation. OK air and water quality are important but wasn't the original mandate of the EPA to stop large businesses from polluting? We all know there are at lease 20% less manufacturing job today compared to 2000!
Now the EPA wants to save the polar bear? Coal usage between 2000-2007 was flat in the U.S. but worldwide usage went up over 50% with almost all that increase in Asia. Tell me how much smog in California originates in Asia now!
The EPA wants to reduce GHG emissions it is no longer equipped to do the job!
We need a new game plan if we want to control GHG emissions. It's not called American climate change.
Need a new agency that applies a tax or tariff based on the manufacturing, transportation, and sustainability of products sold start here. Later export the idea to other western nations and then the rest of the world. Call it a steady state economy start.
BUT we need to lead. We can't be hypocrites. The world still looks at us and points their collective finger. We can't ask others to change if we don't make the first move. It would be ridiculous to even try, considering our standard of living compared to everyone else's.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/na.html
This is why we should leave the science up to the scientists. And not bloggers on the dark corners of the internet.
And for GOOD reason!
We need to support RE innovation, especially robotic factory development and boycott everything that those self serving politicians who oppose RE development have to offer. Oh, they don't have nothing to offer but false hopes in a bankrupt system given over to corporates who (now have to) ship jobs elsewhere.
To the tea baggers, instead of cutting our future by slashing a way to prepare us for the OD (oil decline), why not instead put a tariff on ALL goods from China. That would more than fix EVERYTHING. Just a small tariff at that!