Fresh off a flight from Washington, U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., warned that President Donald Trump’s impending budget proposal, if implemented, would take a “machete to essential investments in our communities.”
“I’m worried that the new president’s budget priorities are unbalanced and dangerously misguided,” Leahy said during a press conference Friday afternoon at the ECHO center in Burlington.
While the details of Trump’s budget proposal have not yet been released, multiple news reports say the president will propose a $54 billion increase in defense spending that would be offset by domestic program cuts. Leahy says the cost of Trump’s $21 billion wall along the border with Mexico will also come out of local and state funds.
Federal agencies across government would see a 13 percent cut to offset the military spending, and the Environmental Protection Agency would suffer some of the biggest reductions.
According to a document from the National Association of Clean Air Agencies obtained by VTDigger, the White House is recommending a 30 percent reduction in EPA grants to states, while agency staff would be cut by 20 percent. E&E News has reported that Trump wants to cut EPA’s budget by $2 billion. Twenty percent of the 15,000 positions at the agency would be eliminated, according to Reuters.
Trump is recommending the phase out of a number of federal programs, many of which are implemented in Vermont. They include grants for brownfield cleanup sites, as well as federal assistance through the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund and the Clean Water State Revolving Fund.
EPA money that supports cleanup of Lake Champlain is also in peril. The estimated federal contribution for phosphorus runoff mitigation is $1 billion over a 20-year period.
Since 2010, EPA staffers have spent thousands of hours developing water quality standards for the lake, setting a threshold for Total Maximum Daily Load allowable for phosphorous pollution. Those researchers may no longer be employed, if the budget goes through.
Clean water research programs are also in jeopardy. Last year, the Lake Champlain Basin Program received $4 million from the EPA, totaling roughly 80 percent of the organization’s budget.
The Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation is heavily subsidized by the EPA. Last year, 40 percent of the DEC budget was made up of federal dollars.
Julie Moore, the secretary of the Agency of Natural Resources, has said that about $32 million in EPA funds supports the Department of Environmental Conservation annually. About $12 million is for staff and services, while $20 million is allocated for drinking and wastewater infrastructure improvements in Vermont. A 30 percent reduction in federal funding could gut the state’s environmental regulatory structure and significantly reduce monies distributed to local communities for clean water projects.
Leahy, who is the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said Friday that he met with Trump’s budget director earlier this week.
The Trump budget proposal is “reckless,” Leahy said, and “it’s going to have a devastating effect on us.” A full budget proposal is expected to be unveiled on March 16.
Leahy said federal support of everything from cancer research to farm programs would evaporate to pay for a bigger military and an ineffective southern border wall.
He was most concerned about rollbacks in environmental regulations, and he warned that federal support for cleaning up Lake Champlain could evaporate entirely.
“We spent 25 years — 25 years — getting to where we are,” Leahy said, his voice rising. “Vermont, New York, Canada, federal government working together to make sure Lake Champlain did not end up in the condition other major water sources have.”
“These gains that we’ve slowly and carefully made — gains that are there for the next generation — will be gone,” he added.
Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger also expressed alarm over the potential shutoff of federal support to clean up the lake. Toxic algae blooms have proliferated in Lake Champlain because of phosphorous blooms, leading to the closure of beaches and even a concern that cyanobacteria could contaminate the city’s water supply. The Mississquoi Bay area of the lake is now a toxic soup of blue green algae.
“Even with the federal government playing a major partnership role we have a huge challenge ahead of us,” the mayor said.
Weinberger later added: “If the federal government retreats substantially from its partnership role in [cleanup], it is just even a more daunting challenge, and much harder to see how we get it done, which would be a tragedy.”
In drafting his budget proposal, Trump has considered ideas from a budget blueprint released by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank based in D.C. Leahy has railed against a number of the provisions in the Heritage proposal, including the proposed elimination of two dozen grant programs to assist victims of domestic violence.
On Friday, Leahy said his approach to appropriations has always been to budget for the future, but that the Trump proposal is wholly regressive.
“We are going to go back to the 80s,” he said.
Leahy said that he is working with members of the Senate to oppose the cuts to environmental programs. Many senators on both sides of the aisle are concerned about the impact of the reductions on local communities that receive federal money through water quality, brownfields, air pollution and Superfund programs.
