The EPA’s Budget Request

The House Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing this week to discuss the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) budget. As Committee Chair, Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rodgers (R-Wash.) noted in her opening statement the EPA’s funding has ballooned by $1.09 billion since President Biden took office. The agency has also added roughly 15,000 new employees to help promulgate and enforce their burdensome regulations on the American people. Their 2025 budget request would add an extra $1.1 billion to their existing budget and another 2,000 employees.

Taxpayers must ask where all of this money and manpower are going. This question is especially pressing, as the EPA is increasingly outsourcing its regulatory authority to California. The EPA is poised to allow California regulators a waiver to the Clean Air Act’s restriction on states setting their own emissions standards. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) recently imposed a rule that would impose draconian standards on locomotives.

The standards in CARB’s proposal are both unreasonable and unworkable. A number of media outlets from the National Review to the Wall Street Journal have noted as much. Further, a group of 34 individuals and organization released a joint letter last month urging the EPA to refuse California this waiver to implement the CARB rule. There is cause for concern in all areas of the country.

This technologically unfeasible standard would impact supply chains across the country, as many goods Americans important and export transit through California by rail and then by sea. This is why a federal agency like the EPA consistently bowing to overreach at the state level is so concerning. In addition, with a confusing patchwork of 50 different regulation with which to comply, locomotive manufacturers will be forced to defer to the most burdensome if they want to operate across the nation. 

This is not the first time the Biden EPA has let California do its heavy lifting. Two years ago, the EPA reinstated what’s known as the California waiver, allowing CARB to set its own corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards for automobiles. This came three years after the Trump administration revoked such a waiver. While California has a large car market – roughly 12 percent of the total US market – its regulations impact carmakers and locomotive manufacturers everywhere. Citizens and businesses are being regulated by lawmakers who do not represent them.

On its own, the EPA – according to McMorris-Rodgers – has finalized 125 rules under the present administration, imposing a cumulative regulatory cost of roughly one trillion dollars on American businesses. Further, the Biden EPA’s insistence on high-cost unworkable fuel alternatives have contributed to a stark rise in electricity prices.

These numbers will undoubtedly climb higher, given the EPA’s willingness to outsource crushing regulations to regulatory bodies like CARB. Congress should not add billions of dollars and thousands of personnel to an agency that squeezes the American people on energy prices and is not even willing to do the entirety of their job themselves, instead letting a state with only 11.6 percent of the nation’s population pick up their slack. As this budget request remains under consideration, this sad fact ought to be front of mind when appropriating funds to the EPA.