EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is scheduled to travel to Capitol Hill to defend the Trump administration’s FY19 budget plan for the agency during two House subcommittee hearings scheduled for later this month.
The House Environment Subcommittee and the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee are respectively scheduled to hold hearings examining EPA’s budget plan for the coming fiscal year on April 26. The White House has proposed cutting EPA spending to roughly 25 percent below its FY17 level, but Congress is expected to largely reject cutting the agency’s funding to that extent.
Meanwhile, the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee began the process of considering EPA’s FY19 budget when it held its annual Members Day hearing on April 18. The hearing gave members of Congress an opportunity to brief the subcommittee on their FY19 budget priorities, but only one lawmaker did so, and his remarks avoided any discussion of water or wastewater infrastructure funding programs. Subcommittee leaders could unveil a draft of their proposed FY19 Interior-EPA spending bill in the coming weeks.
EPA’s State Revolving Fund (SRF) and Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA) programs, which deliver aid to communities to finance water and wastewater infrastructure, received millions of additional funding dollars when Congress finalized the FY18 budget in March. The programs are expected to ultimately receive strong funding in FY19 as well due to the increased FY19 budget authority for infrastructure programs that congressional leaders and President Trump agreed to earlier this year.