A draft FY16 Interior-EPA spending bill approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee on June 18 would cut EPA spending by nearly $540 million – including a total of $533 million that would be trimmed from the Drinking Water and Clean Water State Revolving Funds (SRFs).
Overall the bill would provide EPA with $7.6 billion next year – significantly below its current appropriation of $8.14 billion. The Drinking Water and Clean Water State Revolving Funds (SRFs) would bear the brunt of the cuts, with the DWSRF receiving $775.9 million (compared to $906.9 million this year), and the CWSRF in line for $1.047 (compared to $1.449 billion in FY15).
Despite these proposed cuts, members of both parties expressed support for the SRFs during the committee’s June 18 markup of the bill. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Chairwoman of the Interior and Environment Appropriations Subcommittee, said the lower funding SRF funding levels were necessary in order to keep the overall bill in compliance with the spending limits of the Senate’s budget blueprint, and also noted the bill’s proposed SRF funding levels matched the amount of President Obama’s fiscal year 2015 request for the programs.
Appropriations Committee Ranking Democrat Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) said the EPA appropriations proposed in the bill represented “inadequate sequester-level funding,” and promised that Senate Democrats would filibuster all FY16 spending bills unless spending ceilings were raised – potentially setting up a government funding showdown in the coming months. Democrats also criticized a policy rider attached to the bill that would prohibit EPA from implementing its new Clean Water Rule.
Senate appropriators did fulfill one component of President Obama’s budget request for EPA by including $5 million to help the agency implement the new Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA). The President had requested this amount to support EPA’s ongoing work to get WIFIA up and running, and Senate appropriators included these funds within a pot of money provided for EPA’s water quality protection efforts. The bill would not, however, offer funding for distribution by EPA as WIFIA loans in the 2016 fiscal year.