The Trump administration on Friday unveiled its 2027 budget proposal, a wish list of reforms — especially cuts — it wants to see enacted by Congress in the coming fiscal year.
Maybe the big news is related a suggestion from Trump’s Office of Management and Budget that it wants a $1.5-trillion defense budget. But buried in the bottom lines are other important changes, made to climate and environmental programs, that could help advance the administration’s efforts to thwart the “green agenda.” They include cuts to clean energy programs and major cuts to federal science agencies and environmental justice efforts.
“President Trump is committed to ending funding for the global climate agenda while reinstating American energy production,” the White House said in a statement.
Some Democrats and environmental groups have vowed to oppose it.
“It’s just an out-of-touch request for more money for guns and bombs, and less for things people need, like housing, health care, education, roads, scientific research, and environmental protection,” read a statement from Sen. Oregon Sen.
Among the big-ticket, climate-related items in the proposed budget is the proposed cancellation of more than $15 billion in Energy Department funding for programs aimed at “unreliable renewable energy, decarbonizing the atmosphere, and other expensive technologies that burden taxpayers and consumers,” the proposal says.
“The US government will no longer be able to subsidize renewable forms of energy that cripple the grid or Green New Scam projects that raise consumer costs and promote leftist policies,” it said.
The budget would redirect nearly $4.7 billion from President Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to the installation of renewable base-load energy, or energy that runs 24/7 and typically does not include wind or solar. It would also cut about $1.1 billion to the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, which manages national laboratories and funds energy technology research.
It would also end subsidies for electric vehicle battery manufacturers, cancel $4 billion in Department of Transportation funding for EV charger programs and end the $4 billion Low Energy Home Energy Assistance Program, among other changes.
Trump has long been hostile to EVs. Last year, he worked overturn the California mandate to set stricter tailpipe emissions standards than the federal government, which supported the state’s desire a ban on the sale of new gas-powered cars from 2035.
The proposal would also cut the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s budget by nearly half. The change would end certain funding for the EPA’s Superfund program and funds for drinking water programs and environmental justice programs, a proposal that “promotes projects that are discriminatory and radical.”
And in the $1.6 billion budget for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the National Weather Service and other weather and climate agencies. The decision will refer to the climate research and education grant programs at NOAA, the proposal that “strengthening students against the market, encouraging [diversity, equity and inclusion] and spread a baseless environmental alarm.”
NOAA has already taken significant action since Trump returned to office, including mass demolition and the closing of several offices.
Environmental groups on Friday urged Congress to reject the cuts.
“Cutting NOAA’s budget will weaken climate forecasting, disrupt fisheries management and create ocean research — endangering American health, livelihoods and global scientific leadership,” said Katherine Tsantiris, director of government relations at the nonprofit Ocean Conservancy.
Other changes in the budget include new priorities for the US Forest Service, which recently made a restructuring of the building. The budget would shift the agency’s focus from domestic timber production and wildfire risk reduction and response, and away from more recent shifts in conservation and recreation. Last year, the administration ordered the Forest Service to open 112.5 million acres of national forest to logging, including all 18 of California’s national forests.
The proposal is broadly consistent with the president’s actions so far in his second term, including the to emphasize fuel production and attacks targeting clean energy systems, especially as a coastal wind.
In his first year back in office, Trump has again focused on climate science, including dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Researchleading weather and climate research center in Boulder, Colo., and demolishing hundreds of scientists performance in the sixth national climate assessment.
Like most of the president’s budgets, this proposal is unlikely to pass in its current form. Congress will now take up the plan, and final spending levels are expected to be decided later this year.
