April 10, 2001

In the wake of anti-environmental policy decisions on clean air, climate change and safe drinking water, and only two weeks before Earth Day, the Bush administration today again revealed its true colors in its Fiscal Year 2002 detailed budget proposal. The Bush administration first released a budget "blueprint" in February. The blueprint indicated that key environmental needs would not be met. Today's release confirms this assumption, and deals a few unexpected blows to efforts to protect the environment. Furthermore, the FY02 budget proposal illustrates President Bush's failure to address growing public concern about his commitment to environmental stewardship.

The FY02 budget proposal slashes funding for programs that safeguard the environment and public health, while increasing taxpayer investments in environmentally destructive programs and reneging on a campaign promise to protect tropical forests. Following are specific findings in relevant agencies:

Department of Energy
The Department of Energy (DOE) FY02 budget request represents an increase over the FY01 and FY00 outlays. Despite this overall increase, the FY02 request includes cuts to several anti-environmental programs. Unfortunately, efforts to reduce these anti-environmental programs pale in comparison to funding cuts for environmentally beneficial programs such as energy efficiency and renewable energy.

· Energy Research and Development and Conservation -- The President's budget proposes a 17 percent cut in fossil energy research and development (although fossil energy as a whole received a one-percent increase). Unfortunately, many of the fossil fuel cuts are recycled into a new coal programs. Nuclear energy also would receive an 8 percent cut in nuclear energy programs. While this might normally been seen as a positive step toward an environmentally responsible energy policy, the cuts in nuclear programs are overshadowed by the egregious and irresponsible cuts to environmentally critical programs. Overall funding for renewable energy was cut by more than 36 percent. Specifically, geothermal, hydrogen, solar, and wind energy resources all received cuts of at least 50 percent. Only the environmentally questionable biomass/biofuels program was spared, receiving a cut of only about 7 percent, or $6 million.

The budget also proposes a cut of 2.5 percent in energy conservation from FY01, but this seemingly small number hides deep cuts in many important programs. The administration is requesting $273 million for weatherization grants, an increase of almost 80 percent. However, the Bush administration proposes a 46 percent, or $48 million cut from research and development into energy conservation in building technologies. Additionally, programs to encourage energy conservation in the federal government and industry sector, the nation's largest energy consumer, would be cut by 48 percent and 41 percent respectively.

· Coal-Based Technologies -- The budget proposes funding the "Clean Coal Power Initiative" at a level of $2 billion over the next ten years, with $150 million this year. The Clean Coal Technology Program (CCTP) has already funneled $2 billion of taxpayer money to subsidize research and development of coal burning technologies since 1984. This program is almost universally viewed as the epitome of wasteful spending and corporate welfare and yet the Bush administration is setting up a new level of subsidies for coal, the dirtiest of all fossil fuels. At one point Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham explained the elimination of a petroleum program by stating "I could not justify beginning a program that supports an industry that is fully capable of funding such efforts themselves." This standard does not seem to apply to the coal and utility industries.

The administration's FY02 proposal for DOE presents an unbalanced approach to energy resource development by slashing investments in future technologies such as solar, wind, and fuel cells as well as in energy conservation. This indicates that the administration is more interested in maintaining the polluting power regime of the past rather than looking ahead to a sustainable future.

Environmental Protection Agency
Under the Bush budget, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the nation's leading environmental enforcement and regulatory agency, would be cut by $500 million (6.4 percent) from last year's funding level. Key programs that promote and ensure clean air would receive an $86 million cut from FY01 levels for science and technology research, and $23 million less for core operating program needs such as compliance assurance and pollution control. Similarly, clean water programs would receive a $27 million cut in FY02 for science and technology research and a $61 million cut for core operating program needs.

In addition, the EPA's ability to enforce compliance with environmental laws is severely limited in the President's budget proposal. Specifically, the budget refers to a $38 million cut in operational spending for programs that serve as a "credible deterrent to pollution" and seek to enforce "greater compliance with the law." Given the funding cuts outlined in this budget, the administration's commitment to its stated goals seems questionable.

Department of Interior
As expected, the President's budget proposal for the Department of Interior provides full funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund and seeks to address the maintenance backlog in national parks. While we commend those commitments, the President's proposal shortchanges many other critical conservation programs and would actually boost spending for a variety of anti-environmental activities.

In particular, the budget proposal would cut key conservation programs in both the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in favor of investments in domestic energy production. The budget proposal cuts BLM's land resources and wildlife/fisheries management programs by a combined $15.6 million from FY01 levels. The FWS as a whole would receive a cut of almost $113 million, meaning key programs within the agency to monitor and protect endangered species, conserve and protect habitat would also receive cuts. At the same time, the administration dedicates a substantial increase of funding (almost $15 million) to BLM programs intended to facilitate and expedite the extraction of minerals, oil and gas by private companies on public lands, in the Outer Continental Shelf, and in Alaska's North Slope - including the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve.

The President's request for the DOI also funds two highly controversial water projects: the Animas La Plata project in Colorado received a $10 million funding increase and the Garrison project received $25 million.

Department of Agriculture
The President's budget proposal would drastically reduce funding for the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), the arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) that funds farmland conservation programs and seeks to provide landowner incentives to conserve wildlife habitat and address environmental quality. Even worse, programs like the Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP) and the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program (WHIP) - both voluntary programs that provide financial incentives to conserve land - would receive no funding at all. NRCS as a whole would receive $128 million less than FY01.

The USDA commodity programs would remain essentially unchanged from FY01. After intense lobbying from members of Congress and industry, the administration backed away from its earlier proposal to eliminate the Market Access Program (MAP). The budget provides full funding for MAP, which provides overseas advertising assistance for corporations. The budget also increases funding for the U.S. Forest Service's Forest Products Program and USDA's Wildlife Services Program. These programs are responsible for clear-cutting our public lands and destroying wild predators such as coyotes and wolves.

Department of Transportation
The budget figures for the Department of Transportation are in line with the authorizations in the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21). Under the Bush plan, highway spending would increase by 6 percent from $30.2 billion last year to $32.2 billion. Transit spending would increase by 8 percent from $6.3 billion last year to $6.7 billion. Amtrak funding would stay nearly flat, with an increase from $520 million last year to $521 million. This plan exposes the fundamental inequities in federal transportation funding - in this era of supposed equity, highways receive almost 5 times more federal funding than public transportation.

Adding insult to injury, the Bush Administration is proposing a significant change in the way transit projects are funded. Currently, if a state wants to build a new highway or transit project, the federal government picks up 80 percent of the tab. Under the Bush plan, after 2004 the federal government would only pay for 50 percent of the cost of new transit projects (known as "New Starts"). The states will be responsible for the other 50 percent. Apparently, there are many communities seeking new transit projects, and there isn't enough funding to go around.

During the writing of TEA-21, many states complained that there wasn't enough money available for highways. At that point, the solution was to throw money at the highway program until every state was happy. Rather than increasing the amount of money available for transit, the Bush Administration is instead asking states to do more with less. The likely result is that states will be unable to come up with the remaining 50 percent, and many ambitious transit projects will go unfounded.

International Affairs
The President's budget proposal would hamstring efforts to protect the global environment. What's worse, it would do so in violation of a campaign pledge that President Bush made. The proposed budget for international affairs does not include funding for the Tropical Forest Conservation Act, although President Bush stated on October 26, 2000 that he would seek a minimum of $100 million each year for this program. The administration's February budget "blueprint" similarly said it would seek increased funding for the program, which received $13 million in FY01 funding. The Tropical Forest Conservation Act is a key tool in the fight to protect threatened forests around the world while lessening the burden of poor countries' debt, and won overwhelming Congressional approval in 1998.

Even worse, the FY02 budget proposal grants authority to transfer as much as $13 million to the Tropical Forest Conservation Act from the U.S. Agency for International Development's (USAID) Development Assistance Account. Among other things, this under-funded program supports international efforts to conserve biodiversity. So not only does the Administration refuse to grant new funds for tropical forest conservation, it is proposing to siphon funds away from another environmentally beneficial program.

At the same time that it cuts pro-environment spending, the international affairs budget would continue to fund the anti-environmental Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA). Although the budget proposal represents only a minor increase over FY01 spending, environmental groups are advocating that funding for this arm of the World Bank be eliminated. MIGA uses taxpayer money to support foreign owned corporations and banks, and an overwhelming share of its investments harm the environment.

More promising is the budget proposal's nearly $223 million cut to the Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im). Ex-Im finances U.S. corporations' operations overseas, and invests billions of dollars in climate change-inducing fossil fuels. In FY00 Ex-Im devoted 28 percent of its portfolio-roughly the size of the budget proposal's cut-to these dirty projects, rather than channeling taxpayer dollars toward cleaner sources of energy. The administration's proposed cut could help the environment, but only if Ex-Im takes it as a strong signal that it should scale back its investment in fossil fuels.

Northwest Salmon Recovery
In December 2000, the federal government released a Pacific Northwest salmon recovery plan to address the declining runs of wild salmon caused by dams on the lower Snake and Columbia Rivers. The President's budget request seriously short-changes the federal salmon recovery plan for Columbia and Snake River fish listed under the Endangered Species Act. For example, the plan directs the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) to make major new investments in a series of measures designed to significantly improve the chances of species survival, including improvements in water quality and availability as well as structural and operational adjustments to federal dams on the Columbia and Snake Rivers. Yet the administration budget proposes to keep the Corps' Columbia River Fish Mitigation budget flat at $81 million for FY02, less than half of what is needed. Overall, the President's budget request under-funds the federal salmon recovery plan by nearly $400 million in FY02.