Republicans to Try to Cut ‘Emergencies’ in PHMSA Bill
April 20, 2016
By: Mark Drajem, Bloomberg
April 20, 2016
Inside the Beltway
House Appropriations Advances $37.4b Energy-Water Spending Bill The House Appropriations Committee approved its $37.4 billion energy and water spending bill, while foreshadowing the fights to come on emergency funding and pumping water in California’s Central Valley. None of the Democratic amendments offered were adopted. One, brought up by Rep. Marcy Kaptur, would strike policy riders related to the Clean Water Act. But most of the discussion centered around her move to strike the bill’s proposal to pump more water into California’s Central Valley, in part by changing the way the health of fish are evaluated by the federal government. Rep. Rosa DeLauro offered a feisty appeal for an amendment that would provide funding for Flint, Michigan, but it failed, too.
Shelanski Threatened With Contempt Over Water Rule Subpoena The chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee threatened April 19 to hold the Obama administration’s top regulatory gatekeeper in contempt of Congress over his response to a subpoena seeking records related to the waters of the U.S. rule. Rep. Jason Chaffetz said he had received just over 6,000 pages of documents from the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in response to a July 2015 subpoena but said 80 percent of those were worthless because they were either duplicates or publicly available.
“Why should we not hold you in contempt of Congress?” Chaffetz asked Howard Shelanski, administrator of OIRA. “Why does it take two hearings, a subpoena, letters, requests, and you still are nonresponsive?” At issue is a subpoena seeking records and communications concerning the Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers June 2015 final rule (RIN 2040-AF30) clarifying which waters and wetlands are subject to federal Clean Water Act requirements, Bloomberg BNA’s Anthony Adragna reports.
Senators Criticize EPA Budget Cuts to Water Programs Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) lashed out at Environment Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy at an April 19 budget hearing, claiming the agency’s “activist” agenda on climate change jeopardizes its other important work. Other committee Republicans joined the criticism of McCarthy, accusing her agency of slashing American jobs in coal country and overstepping constitutional bounds with the Clean Water Rule and Clean Power Plan. Inhofe, however, set the tone of the hearing in his opening statement about EPA’s alleged deviation from its core functions, Bloomberg BNA’s Brian Dabbs reported. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), the committee’s ranking member and often a supporter of EPA policies, criticized cuts in the Obama administration’s proposal for the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund. “Our nation’s water infrastructure needs far outstrip the funding available, and the proposed $257 million cut to the State Revolving Funds will make this funding gap grow,” Boxer said.