The Trump administration’s “skinny budget” slashes Department of Interior spending by 30.5 percent and eliminates up to 10 percent of its 60,000 workers.
“If Congress authorizes spending levels above the administration’s budget request, would you spend the amounts provided?” asked Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Subcommittee chair Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho).
“Yes,” Burgum replied. “That would be the law.”
The department sets policy for 11 agencies, including the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Geological Survey, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, and Strategic Science Group.
The plan trims more than $5 billion from Interior’s FY25 budget and eliminates 1,000 National Park Service, 1,000 U.S. Geological Survey, 800 Bureau of Land Management, 420 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and 150 Bureau of Reclamation jobs, among trims in other agencies. Interior has already dismissed 1,700 probationary workers.
Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nevada) said that layoffs in underfunded, understaffed agencies that manage more than 80 percent of the land in Nevada will dramatically affect communities across his state and the West.
While he agreed with the goal of refocusing on the mission, “we also need the ability to operate,” he said. “I don’t know how you can sit there and hold somebody’s feet to the fire when there’s a bunch of empty desks.”
Burgum, the former two-term North Dakota governor who chairs the president’s National Energy Dominance Council, said since assuming office, he’s ferreted through Interior assets and expenditures, and has identified ways to slash costs without degrading performance.
Citing the Bureau of Land Management, Burgum said it has field, district, regional, state, and Washington offices.
“If you were in the timber business, the grazing business, you would not have five layers between headquarters and the front lines. That’s what we’re trying to streamline.”
Burgum said staffing cuts are targeted, boosting the number of professionals in places like Elko, Nevada, while scaling back the 4,000 who work in Washington.
“At the end of the day,” he said, “we want more minutes on mission, more people on the front lines, more rangers in the parks, more biologists in the grasslands. There’s big opportunity to cut overhead and get more people on the ground.”
Plan Prioritizes Energy
Burgum said in his testimony that the proposed $11.9 billion Interior budget—the same spending level as Interior’s FY14 budget—emphasizes “strategic investments to further President Trump’s commitment to energy dominance.”The plan “prioritizes America’s energy independence with a strategy that focuses on the development of ample baseload power” to win the “artificial intelligence arms race with China,” he said.
Burgum said he’s “taken meaningful measures to reverse the mountains of red tape” imposed by the last administration, including opening 625 million offshore acres “certainly worth trillions of dollars” to oil leasing “bafflingly restricted from development” by the former president.
Among priorities is “mapping the full extent of resources within the federal estate,” he said. “We recently published a finding showing there’s at least 23 percent more recoverable oil and gas in the Gulf of America than previously known.”
Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) questioned how Interior is going to assess the “federal estate” when the administration’s plan “eviscerates the U.S. Geological Survey.”
She said the plan slashes 1,000 workers from the survey’s payroll and cuts $564 million from its budget.
Burgum said the plan allows “beautiful, clean American coal” to “play a pivotal role in continuing to power America going forward.”
In April, Interior “ended the Obama-era federal coal moratorium and removed layers of red tape” that undermined coal production on federal lands, he said, noting it has approved expansion of Spring Creek Coal Mine in Montana.
The Obama administration paused new coal leases on federal lands until completing a comprehensive review of the leasing program. The pause was lifted by the Trump administration in 2017. The Biden administration in 2021 rescinded that reversal but never restored the pause.
China’s “Communist Party leadership knows the ‘AI Arms Race’ will be won by the country with the best technology and most electricity,” Burgum said. “Keeping domestic coal-fired power generation open will help us win this contest, help ensure 24 x 7 x 365 reliability, while also driving down electricity costs for American families.”
The plan encourages mining, especially for critical and rare earth minerals, eliminates subsidies for “intermittent” energy programs, and improves wildland firefighting by consolidating Interior and Agriculture Department manpower.
The plan also calls for $1.2 billion in cuts for Native American programs, including more than $900 million in slashed school construction funding for Bureau of Indian Education programs.
House Appropriations Chair Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), noting his mother was the first Native American woman to serve in Oklahoma’s Legislature, agreed there is duplication between Bureau, tribal, and public schools, but many need upgrades.
“Kids need to have places to learn,” Cole said. “I’ve been to good [Bureau, tribal schools] and I’ve been to some places I wouldn’t send my kids to.”
Simpson said while he doesn’t “see eye-to-eye” with the administration on some cuts, the hearing is “just the first step” in a months-long process.
Therefore, Amodei joked, “Be careful what you ask for.”
“I don’t think I asked for this,” Burgum deadpanned, “but I did say ‘yes’ to accepting the post.”
