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Unable to finish work on the nine remaining spending bills for FY05, House and
Senate appropriators rolled them into a huge $388 billion omnibus spending bill
(H.R. 4818). The House passed the omnibus on 11/20 by a vote of 344-51, and the
Senate approved the bill on the same day, 65-30. The bill includes funding for
the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration and the departments of Energy, Interior, Transportation, State
and Agriculture. During a marathon weekend and late-night negotiating session,
appropriators grappled with tight budget figures by cutting 0.8 percent across
the board from all spending bills in the omnibus. The result is that most
agencies that deal with environmental issues saw some level of budget cuts for
FY05.
Congress cut the EPA's budget by $277 million, the first such cut in many
years. The bulk of the cuts will be felt in the Clean Water State Revolving
Funds program. This highly successful program, which gives low-interest loans
to communities for wastewater infrastructure projects, was cut by nearly 18
percent. Also receiving significant cuts were the EPA's science and technology
programs. The Superfund program, which funds clean-up at the most contaminated
waste sites around the country, received the same funding as last year.
The Interior section of the bill funds the Department of the Interior and other
agencies, including some forest management programs, at a level of $19.5
billion. This is down $500 million from FY04, although the Department of the
Interior itself received a slight increase over last year's budget. The
National Park Service will see an increase of $75 million to $1.7 billion. The
Land and Water Conservation Fund, which is used to purchase and preserve
national monuments, wildlife habitat and other environmentally or historically
important lands, received $466 million, more than $50 million less than the
president's request. The Department of Agriculture received a total of $87
billion for FY05, but spending on farm conservation programs was cut by $500
million and funding for most conservation programs is well below levels
authorized by the 2002 farm bill.
The $23 billion budget for the Department of Energy is a mixed bag of funding
that includes many nuclear programs.
In a blow to the Bush administration, Congress eliminated all funding (nearly $28 million)
for a new generation of nuclear weapons known as "bunker busters." The administration also
had requested almost $30 million to build a facility that would manufacture the
plutonium "pits" for new nuclear weapons, but Congress provided only $7
million. The president requested funds to prepare the Nevada Test Site for
potential tests of nuclear weapons, but no funds were allocated for this
purpose. The DOE will, however, receive a significant increase in funding for a
program intended to encourage the construction of new nuclear power plants.
Funding for clean-up of high-level nuclear waste in leaking tanks in South
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