'This bill makes very difficult choices,' says Rep. Mike Simpson. House GOP spending bill targets EPA

Straining to meet their budget targets, House Republicans proposed a new round of deep cuts from environmental, arts, and wildlife programs Monday, going billions of dollars beyond the across-the-board reductions already ordered by sequestration in March.

The $24.3 billion natural resources bill represents a $5.5 billion reduction from what Congress had approved only last spring and is about $4 billion below what the agencies have been living with since March.


An estimated $1.5 billion in emergency funding is added to meet fire-fighting costs and the Forest Service’s budget would grow chiefly because of wildfire prevention and suppression programs. But elsewhere the picture is exceptionally bleak.

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The Environmental Protection Agency is among those hardest hit, with its annual funding reduced by about a third to $5.5 billion. The much smaller Fish and Wildlife Service is also cut 27 percent below what had been enacted earlier this year.

Appropriations for the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities would be virtually cut in half. No funding is provided for the Woodrow Wilson International Center.

The Indian Health Service escapes further reductions but gets no relief either from the cuts already made under sequestration. In the case of the National Park Service, the bill adds back about $24 million to operating accounts to keep facilities open next year.

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“Simply put, this bill makes very difficult choices in an extremely tough budget environment,” said Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), who chairs the natural resources subcommittee. “We are going to see these kind of dramatic reductions as long as we keep trying to reduce the debt by cutting discretionary spending alone, rather than also tackling mandatory spending, which is the real driver of our debt.”