Budget

Environmentalists are seeking Senate sponsors for key funding and policy amendments the House attached to EPA spending legislation late last week that boost EPA enforcement and waste cleanup funding, while barring the Bush administration from implementing contentious pesticide and cost-benefit policies.

The amendments' backers say their passage shows conservatives are wary of opposing environmentalists and Democrats on several high profile green issues.

The Office of Management and Budget's announcement that it is dropping its controversial plan setting quotas for EPA and other agencies to open half of all jobs to private competition, replacing it with an agency-specific approach, is drawing bipartisan criticism that the administration is still arbitrarily seeking to cut the federal workforce.

House appropriators are raising concerns about EPA's use of human chemical data in developing regulations, and are directing the agency to seek assistance from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in interpreting such biomonitoring data. The committee's direction comes as industry officials are raising concerns that the increasing use of such data in tort litigation and by federal regulators will result in large damages awards and tighter environmental regulations.

A House appropriations subcommittee has approved $8 billion for EPA's fiscal year 2004 budget, a $375 million boost above the Bush administration's funding request.

But House Democrats are blasting the amount as inadequate because they say it is still $74 million less than FY03 funding, and are vowing to restore some agency funding before the bill comes to the floor for a vote.