EPA Budget FY02 Testimony

5/31/2001

Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs, HUD, and Independent Agencies

Chairman Bond, Ranking Member Mikulski, and distinguished Members of the Subcommittee, my name is Colleen Kelley, and I am the National President of the National Treasury Employees Union. NTEU represents more than 150,000 federal employees, including the professional employees who work at the Environmental Protection Agency. I appreciate this opportunity to present testimony to you today on behalf of the men and women who work to ensure a cleaner and healthier environment for all Americans.

Day in and day out, the employees at the EPA are working to reduce the health risks to the American public through the enforcement of our environmental laws, the cleanup of contaminated lands and waterways, and the development of new scientifically sound environmental standards. If we want to continue our nation’s progress in cleaning up our environment, then Congress must work to ensure the EPA gets the staffing and resources the agency needs to effectively carry out its mission. Unfortunately, the budget President Bush has proposed for the Environmental Protection Agency falls far short.

The Bush budget severely undercuts current EPA operations and fails to provide funding to support efforts to combat future environmental threats. Most troubling is the Bush proposal to cut the EPA workforce – those on the front lines in protecting the American public from environmental dangers – by 500 employees. Specifically, the budget would cut EPA’s enforcement staff in Washington, DC, and in regional offices by 9 percent. While cutting the staffing and funding levels for the EPA, the Bush budget shifts significant power from the federal government to the states, many of which have questionable environmental enforcement records, and to private contractors, who are often more concerned with their quarterly financial reports than developing and enforcing fair and consistent environmental standards.

Environmental protection and enforcement programs and federal clean water and clean air programs take severe hits under the Bush budget. The budget proposed by President Bush slashes $500 million from the level of funding appropriated by Congress for 2001. The $500 million cut from the EPA budget includes a cut of $158 million from EPA's efforts to enforce laws that keep polluters from contaminating our air and our drinking water. It also includes cuts to the Safe Food Program, which is aimed at ensuring a food supply free of harmful pesticides; the Pollution Prevention Program, which helps reduce toxic emissions in our air; the Waste Management Program, which fosters the safe transport, storage, and disposal of solid waste; and the Global and Cross Border Environmental Risk Program, which helps reduce global atmospheric environmental health threats.

President Bush’s budget even slashes $56 million from EPA’s Science and Technology Account, the agency’s primary stream of funding to support scientific and technological research into how best to protect the health of American families. This is particularly ironic since President Bush has rolled back many Clinton Administration environmental protection regulations – including the revised standard for cancer-causing arsenic in America's drinking water – claiming the EPA needs to conduct more scientific studies.

As the number and complexity of threats to our environment and to human health continue to increase, it is critical that the Congress provide additional funding for staffing at the EPA. We owe it to future generations of Americans to leave them with a clean environment. We are all stewards of the earth, and as such, we should continue to foster science-based innovation and public policy that protects the public health and our environment. The professional employees at the EPA are the ones who have years of expertise in these critical areas, and they are the ones who are in the best position to foster environmental progress. We cannot expect the EPA to continue to protect the public health without the staffing and resources necessary to do the job.

The work performed by the men and women at the EPA is often taken for granted. Yet thanks to persistent work by EPA employees, we are reducing air pollution, improving the quality of our drinking water systems, and allowing Americans to live longer and healthier lives. EPA scientists, analysts, lawyers, and others who have dedicated their lives to serving the public continue to work to find the most cost effective and most efficient solutions to addressing our country's greatest environmental threats.

Now is the time to build on our science base so that we can be assured that the planet we leave to our next generation is cleaner and in better shape than the one we inherited from earlier generations. The American people expect that their tax dollars are being spent to continue to expand the science base at the EPA so that we can better mitigate and prevent environmental threats. Unfortunately, the budget President Bush has proposed for the EPA would likely reverse years of environmental progress. I urge you to reject President Bush’s EPA budget proposal and pass a budget that provides the EPA with the staffing and resources required to do its job.

I would like to thank this Subcommittee for giving NTEU the opportunity to present our views on the EPA budget for fiscal year 2002. As you continue your subcommittee’s deliberations, I hope you will give special consideration to EPA’s dedicated workforce, a team of public servants who have committed themselves to cleaning up our environment and protecting the health of the American people.