Geoscience Policy Monthly Review
june 2015
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budget
Senate Appropriations passes FY 2016 Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies bill
June 11, 2015
On June 11, the Senate Appropriations Committee passed its Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies (CJS) funding bill for fiscal year (FY) 2016, one week after the House passed its own CJS bill. The Senate bill would flat-fund the National Science Foundation (NSF) from FY 2015 levels at $7.3 billion, and would appropriate $5.4 billion for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), $600 million below the Administration’s request.
The bill includes a $23 million increase to NOAA’s National Weather Service’s $1.1 billion budget for weather and storm predictions. It would also fully fund NOAA’s main satellite programs, but would provide only $150 million, $245 million less than the President’s request, for the Polar Follow-On satellite program to fill future gaps in weather data as satellites need to be retired. The bill appropriates an additional $2.3 million for construction of a new icebreaker vessel; however, that amount is $147 million less than the amount required to actually build the vessel, which is a necessity for charting Arctic waters, according to Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK).
Democrats continued to push for an end to the sequester, which caps government spending in an effort to mitigate federal spending, and Ranking Member Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) pushed for an amendment that would function as an entirely new bill to provide greater funding for the NSF, NASA, NOAA, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology; the amendment failed to pass a voice vote. The bill passed the committee by a vote of 27-3.
Sources: E&E News, Senate Appropriations Committee
House Interior and Environment Subcommittee approves FY 2016 Interior and Environment bill
16 June 2015
On June 16, the House Appropriations committee approved the fiscal year (FY) 2016 appropriations bill setting funding for the Department of the Interior (DOI), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Bureau of Land Management, and others by a 30-21 vote. H.R 2822 would provide a total of $30.17 billion, $246 million below FY 2015 enacted levels.
Most of the spending cuts in the bill target the EPA, which would lose $718 million from FY 2015 levels. This represents a nine percent cut in overall funding for the EPA. Some of its funds would be diverted to the U.S. Forest Service for wildfire suppression and road maintenance. The bill would fund the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) at $1.05 billion, equivalent to FY 2015 enacted levels.
The bill contains provisions that would curb EPA regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from power plants; circumvent an EPA proposal to expand the Clean Water Act; extend a ban on placing the sage grouse on the Endangered Species List; cut the Clean Water and Safe Drinking Water Funds by 23 percent; defund implementation of the Waters of the United States rule; constrain land-use restrictions by DOI and the US Forest Service; and defund land acquisition by the Land and Water Conservation Fund. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell criticized these provisions after the bill’s release, as did a consortium of 26 environmental groups that included the Sierra Club and the National Audubon Society.
The bill must now pass the House floor, which will continue voting on amendments after the 4th of July recess.
Sources: E&E News, House Appropriations Committee
Updated on July 6, 2015
Senate Appropriations passes Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies spending bill
June 16, 2015
On June 16, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved a $30 billion spending bill for Interior, Environment, and related agencies. The bill cuts spending across the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) programs but would increase the U.S. Forest Service’s (USFS) overall budget, including new provisions regarding emergency wildfire spending.
The bill would provide $7.6 billion in funding towards EPA programs, $538.8 million below current enacted levels. Funding for air, climate, and energy research was cut $1.5 million below fiscal year (FY) 2015, and criminal and civil enforcement programs were cut by $7.5 million. The bill also cuts $2.5 million from EPA’s research into the effects of hydraulic fracturing on groundwater and bars further research on the subject.
Senate Democrats were especially unhappy with what Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) called the bill’s “poison pill” riders. Among them, the bill would prohibit federal enforcement of the Administration’s Clean Power Plan, prevent the EPA from using a consistent standard for accounting for climate change, block implementation of the Waters of the U.S. rule, halt the Administration’s efforts to tighten ozone standard, and eliminate the proposed requirement for businesses to make financial plans for cleaning up future hazardous water contamination.
The bill funds the Department of the Interior at $11 billion for FY 2016. The bill’s only bipartisan measure would appropriate $1.054 billion for emergency wildfire spending and would end the USFS’s detrimental “fire-borrowing” practice, wherein funds are taken from other USFS programs when wildfire emergency spending exceeds allocated levels.
Sources: E&E News, Senate Appropriations Committee