https://www.newsmax.com/newsfr...23/11/03/id/1140895/

House Republicans on Thursday passed a bill with massive cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency's budget, though the legislation has virtually no chance of becoming law with a Democrat-majority Senate, reported Axios.

HR 4821, approved on a 213-203 vote, slashes the EPA's budget by 39%, or $3.9 billion, the lowest the agency has had in three decades, and requires the Biden administration to pursue drilling off the coast of Alaska.

It also provides a $1.6 billion increase in discretionary funding for the Wildland Fire Management accounts at the Department of the Interior and the Forest Service.

The Senate's version of the bill would give the EPA $9.9 billion, slightly below its current annual budget.

"Cutting funding is never easy or pretty, but with the national debt in excess of $33 trillion and inflation at an unacceptable level, we had to make tough choices to rein in federal spending," Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, who chairs the subcommittee that wrote the bill, said on the floor Thursday, according to the Hill.

The White House this week in a statement said President Joe Biden would veto the bill.

"Funding at such low levels would not only roll back key gains made by this administration to protect the health and well-being of American families, it would prevent any meaningful progress in this area for years to come, endangering communities now and for generations to come," the Biden administration said.

"These damaging cuts would drastically diminish the agency's ability to protect the air we breathe, the water we drink, the public lands we cherish, and the natural resources we count on, risking the health of millions of Americans."

%%%%

I know this is a test, along with the single item spending bill for Israel, but its an interesting turn of events and more in line with a common sense approach to legislating.

It might fail, but it's better to have tried and failed than not to try at all, which is what the Republicans have been doing up to now.

Not sure passing things into clearly defined bits that clearly won't get passed by the Senate and signed by the Resident is being productive.

Can't they stick this kind of thing into the next 'must pass' legislation?

This kind of ineffectual stuff is more accurately labeled as 'trying to be being seen as attempting' to reign in the EPA.

quote:

Originally posted by joel9507:

Can't they stick this kind of thing into the next 'must pass' legislation?

Bundling legislations together MUST end.
This is how you end up with massive omnibus bills that nobody has read and tosses loads of cash around with no accountability.

One issue - one bill.
The end.

I'm happy they're trying. It's what we pay them for.

quote:

Originally posted by creslin:

quote:

Originally posted by joel9507:

Can't they stick this kind of thing into the next 'must pass' legislation?

Bundling legislations together MUST end.
This is how you end up with massive omnibus bills that nobody has read and tosses loads of cash around with no accountability.

One issue - one bill.
The end.

Exactly right! If everything has to be a “you must pass it to see what’s in it” bill, then government spending will never get checked.

The only one-issue legislation that gets through is declaring February 31st "National Weed-eater Day" stuff.

The other side does it, we would be idiotic not to do it as well. Think of it as stuffing breakfast cereal into a box full of insect parts.

One of my requests is to bring back the traditional fuel can. You remember, it has a pour spout on one end, air venting on the other.

Once I see that, I’ll know the EPA has been ‘reigned in’.

OBTW, my fuel cans are older or ‘modified’, I’m just trying to help the next guy.

It seems to an agency of grifters not getting much done ("not" cleaning up after the biggest polluter the US Government).

During a Senate Energy Committee hearing Wednesday, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) spoke about the EPA's failure to properly dispose of nuclear waste in St. Louis for decades.

One of the complaints I've heard down through the years is environmentalist groups are given standing in courts much too easily. That might change soon.

quote:

Originally posted by 12131:

You reigning on the parade?