WASHINGTON— Today, the House Committee on Appropriations voted to advance the Fiscal Year 2024 Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations bill, which cuts and rescinds wasteful Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) funding. Idaho Congressman Mike Simpson – Chairman of the House Interior and Environment Appropriations Subcommittee – authored language that reduces funding for the EPA by nearly 40 percent. 

“The Biden administration’s EPA is working against the American people, not for them,” said Rep. Simpson. “Throughout my time in Congress, I have never seen the EPA have this much-unchecked power. The need to rein in this kind of overreach is abundantly clear. I have long fought the EPA’s overregulation, and I will continue to stand up for Idaho farmers, energy developers, and families who have felt the harm of the EPA’s costly political agenda.” 

Highlights of the bill include:  

• Prohibiting EPA regulatory overreach regarding ozone emissions and steam electric power plants. 
• Prohibiting EPA approvals of pesticide labeling that is inconsistent with a human health assessment or carcinogenicity classification pursuant to the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act.   
• Prohibiting EPA from imposing mandatory reporting of greenhouse gas emissions from manure management systems.  
• Prohibiting EPA from implementing permitting requirements for livestock emissions under the Clean Air Act. 

Over the last two years, the EPA received an additional $100 billion—ten times its annual budget—in supplemental funding, and this year President Biden proposed to give the EPA its highest budget increase in agency history. This bill rescinds $9.373 billion in funding provided to the EPA, the Presidio Trust, and the Council of Environmental Quality by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), bringing the program level to $34.790 billion, 10% below the Fiscal Year 2023 enacted level. Rep. Simpson’s language is part of the Fiscal Year 2024 funding package for the Department of the Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency, and Related Agencies.  

This funding package will now go to the full floor of the House of Representatives for a vote.