Budget

EPA is rejecting a call from its Office of Inspector General (OIG) to recoup nearly $125,000 in travel costs related to former Administrator Scott Pruitt's decision for him and his protective detail to fly first-class due to alleged security concerns, arguing that the trips complied with federal travel rules.

The House Appropriations Committee is floating increases to EPA funding in its fiscal year 2020 spending bill for the agency, laying out a plan that would reverse years of proposed and actual decreases in EPA funding and which sets up further negotiations with the GOP-controlled Senate and White House.

State and local air regulators are faulting EPA’s proposed fiscal year 2020 budget cuts to key Clean Air Act grant programs on which they rely, arguing in comments on the agency’s draft air office funding guidance that further reducing grant funding to states will hinder already strained programs and risk harming public health.

House lawmakers are pressing the Energy Department (DOE) for answers on its growing environmental liability, estimated at almost $400 billion, particularly as that liability outpaces annual cleanup spending, and are questioning how that liability can be cut when the Trump administration is proposing budget cuts to the cleanup program.