Former EPA Officials: Trump Budget Is Even Worse than It Seems

Harsh cuts proposed by Trump administration an "all-out assault on clean air and clean water," says former EPA chief Gina McCarthy.

As the environmental world copes with the draconian budget outline unveiled by President Trump on Thursday, two former EPA administrators and a longtime environmental justice official have more sobering news: It's actually worse than you think.

The budget blueprint handed down from the White House sent the unmistakable message that it plans to take a hacksaw to climate action.  And no agency fell more directly in its path of destruction than the Environmental Protection Agency.

"Literally and figuratively this budget is a scorched earth budget," said Gina McCarthy, EPA administrator under President Obama.  "It represents really an all-out assault on clean air and clean water and our ability to have safe homes, schools, and places to work."

The budget outline proposes a 31 percent cut to the total EPA budget, including a 45 percent reduction in state funds and the elimination of 3,200 positions under new administrator Scott Pruitt, a longtime antagonist of the agency.  Those cuts, McCarthy pointed out, represent one in five agency employees.  Forty two percent of the scientists in the Office in Research and Development—the agency's scientific research arm—will lose their jobs, she said.

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