Trump's EPA Budget Cuts May Unleash a Backlash as Risks Remain
- Environmentalists will fight to protect EPA’s core functions
- Popular grants to states and tribes likely would be preserved
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President Donald Trump’s plan to slash the Environmental Protection Agency’s $8.3 billion budget would almost certainly mean making deep cuts to programs that protect the air and water and invoke fierce protests from environmentalists.
That’s because roughly two out of every five dollars dedicated to the EPA ends up steered to state, tribal and local governments. Even Trump’s own advisers and the new EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, say the agency’s state environmental grants are off limits. That means the administration would need to reduce the EPA’s already tight budget for enforcing environmental laws and its legally mandated portfolio of other work, said John Coequyt, global climate policy director for the Sierra Club.