President Trump’s budget envisions a rapid retreat from the aggressive federal environmental protection policies developed over the last four decades, to be replaced with hollowed-out enforcement and wholesale elimination of some signature federal conservation efforts. The Environmental Protection Agency, which accounts for just a small percentage of federal spending, is targeted for some of Trump’s most brutal cuts. “The budget returns the responsibility for funding local environmental efforts and programs to state and local entities, allowing EPA to focus on its highest national priorities,” the budget blueprint says. The budget would also make good on Trump’s promise to retreat from climate action. No president in recent decades has proposed cuts to environmental protection this deep, and even the Republicans who control Congress are chafing at the prospect of so severely gutting the EPA.

Source: Los Angeles Times March 16, 2017 15:33 UTC