President Joe Biden’s Fiscal Year 2024 (FY24) budget request increases discretionary funding for the Department of Interior (DOI) by $2 billion to $18.9 billion—a 12-percent increase from this year’s enacted spending plan.
Much of that proposed hike chips away at long-lingering deferred maintenance backlogs, beefs up federal wildlands fire-fighting capacities, accelerates water development projects, sustains conservation programs, and streamlines and speeds-up permitting and regulatory reviews by hiring more than 4,000 new staff.
House Republicans, who regained chamber majority during November 2022’s midterm elections after four years of Democrat control, have not organized their own formal budget proposal but have vowed, generally, to significantly slash non-defense spending.
How much in cuts and what specific non-defense programs are on the GOP’s chopping block is uncertain but since January, newly ascended House committee chairs have vowed to put the axe to Biden’s green energy “spending spree boondoggle,” which they say promotes renewable energies at the expense of oil and gas development, and will foster continued inflation, degrade the economy, and imperil American energy independence.
Therefore, any funding request related to Biden’s $2 trillion “rush to green energy policies,” which collectively aim to make U.S. electric generation 100-percent carbon-free by 2035, has Republicans sharpening their budget axes, even for authorized-but-not-appropriated allocations from 2021’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
The only thing missing is caucus clarity on where to chop and how much to cut.
House Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) may have offered some direction about that on April 17.
Speaking at the New York Stock Exchange, McCarthy said that, in exchange for raising the $31.4 trillion federal debt ceiling by June, Republicans will impose an across-the-board reinstatement of FY22’s spending levels and a 1-percent cap on annual funding increases moving forward.
The federal fiscal year, like those for most local governments, begins on Oct. 1. Most states begin fiscal years July 1. The FY22 budget went into effect Oct. 1, 2021, and was crafted before Biden’s green energy push gained momentum, and the BIL and IRA were adopted.
A blanket slash to FY22 spending levels would trim DOI’s FY24 budget request by at least $3 billion and toss aside its proposed $2 billion increase, mainly fostered by requirements in implementing the BIL and IRA.
11 Agencies, 480 Million Acres, 43,000 Buildings
During a four-hour April 19 hearing before the full House Natural Resources Committee, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland spent as much time outlining how reverting to FY22 funding levels would imperil a range of initiatives as she did defending why DOI is seeking a 12-percent increase next year’s budget.Haaland provided succinct highlights of budget requests submitted by DOI’s 11 agencies, which manage more than 480 million acres of public lands across the United States—20 percent of the nation’s land mass—and are responsible for the protection of more than 2,370 endangered and threatened species.
The department’s FY24 budget request includes $3.2 billion for conservation programs, $1.5 billion for scientific research, and $3 billion for 276 projects to whittle into a $3.4 billion deferred-maintenance backlog. The backlog spans the 43,000 buildings and 115,000 miles of road DOI agencies are responsible for.
DOI’s $4.7 billion spending request for the Bureau of Indian Affairs includes funding to hire an additional 370 federal and 55 tribal wildlands fire-fighters, which Haaland described as a “crucial” and urgent investment with wildfires in 2022 “noticeably above the 10-year average.”
Haaland highlighted the key components in all 11 agency-proposed spending plans.
The Bureau of Reclamation’s (BOR) budget request seeks 11.6 percent less in funding than in FY23 in its proposed $3.4 billion budget, which among priorities will stress “dam safety,” Haaland said.
“Our budget investments for Reclamation, in combination with BIL and IRA, will ensure reliable water and power to the American West,” she said.
The U.S. Geological Survey’s (USGS) proposed $1.85 billion budget is 15.4 percent higher than this year’s spending plan but necessary for the agency to maintain 20,000 groundwater monitoring wells, 11,800 stream gauges, and 3,800 quake sensors while directly monitoring 70 volcanos across the country, she said.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which manages 247 million acres of public lands and orchestrates federal onshore oil/gas leasing programs, is seeking a $2 billion FY24 budget, which would be a marginal $354 million increase from this year.
DOI: (Lots Of) Help Wanted
Haaland said across the DOI’s 11 agencies, the most pressing need is to hire more people to orchestrate the increased tempo of permitting and regulatory reviews that the BIL and IRA will foster in inducing green energy development.“Staffing went down considerably during the last administration, a 10-year low, and it is taking a very long time to move that back up,” Haaland said. “It has had real impacts on our communities and communities that you serve,” as well as on lumber companies, ranchers, and oil/gas developers.
“It is incredibly important that we have the folks on the ground to steward these lands” and process the permit applications and regulatory reviews for renewable and conventional energy projects that federal incentives are seeding, she said.
DOI’s FY24 budget request “if fully enacted” would authorize agencies to hire more than 4,000 new workers, and bring the department’s workforce to 68,000, Haaland said.
She said if adopted, the budget request would drive economic development and create an average of 17,000 jobs a year. But without the manpower to herd permits along, the investment emphasis on “grant opportunities for renewable energy programs” won’t be maximized to achieve the Biden administration’s carbon-free 2035 goal.
“The climate crisis is here,” Haaland said. “The drought isn’t going away. Climate change isn’t going away. We take that very seriously. It’s an all hands on deck moment.”
Republicans are not on board with that.
Welcome Back
Haaland, who served in the House as a Democratic representative from New Mexico and sat on the Natural Resources Committee from 2019-21, has not appeared before the panel since immediately after assuming the DOI mantle in January 2021.Chair Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) welcomed Haaland “back to the committee, it’s has been a while” before noting her department has not responded to 80 percent of the committee’s oversight requests, declined testifying in oversight hearings, and has not been forthcoming in detailing how it is spending appropriated BIL and IRA money.
“I have significant concerns about these proposals, starting with the fact that the Biden administration has yet to provide transparency on the staggering amount of money that is already allocated to federal agencies via the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act (aka, BIL). This administration seems content to just throw money at a problem and call it a day,” he said.
“I sincerely hope you can answer our questions today,” Westerman said to Haaland. “No federal agency should be cloaked in mystery, particularly when it comes to spending Americans’ hard-earned tax money.”
There are as many issues of contention in the budget request as there are issues to contend with in the DOI’s vast jurisdiction. But one that rankled Westerman—a forester—is the $3 billion for maintenance.
When Congress adopted The Great American Outdoors Act, it authorized $17 billion “to address the maintenance backlog on public lands yet, in the three years since President Trump signed this bill into law, the federal lands maintenance backlog has ballooned from $14 million to $31 million. Somehow, DOI has managed to spend billions in taxpayer dollars to make a problem significantly worse,” he said.
It is time to start scrutinizing such “discrepancies” rather than “continue to push more money down a black hole,” Westerman said, before adding, “I would be remiss if I did not mention President Biden’s on-going war on the American economy which dramatically affects both industry and communities across the country from day one.”
Under Biden’s green energy agenda to decarbonize by 2035, the administration has shut down pipelines, restricted offshore/onshore oil and gas leases, and shuttered mining projects, he said.
“Unfortunately, today, the administration’s actions are increasing our dependence on foreign adversaries such as Russia, China, and Iran for the natural resources we can and should be producing domestically,” Westerman said. “In addition to strengthening our adversaries, failing Democrat policies are shutting down our economy, killing jobs, and hurting families across the nation.”
Create Disfunction, Scapegoat Disfunction
Democrats defended the DOI’s spending request and reiterated support for continued investment in the administration’s “green” initiatives, which they say are panning out and will prove to be foundational in transitioning to a 21st century economy.Reps. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) and Susie Lee (D-Nev.) agreed that carbon-free electric generation by 2035 is “a goal we all have.”
Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) said Republicans “appear to be worried about the poor oil companies that are rolling in record profits squeezed out of U.S. consumers and at the expense of our planet.”
Huffman also accused the Biden administration of supporting “business as usual with the oil industry … particularly the Willow carbon bomb, which I believe was a terrible decision” regarding the recently approved North Slope Alaska oil project.
Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-N.M.) praised Haaland for the job she has done at the DOI. “To say the least, cleaning up the previous administration’s mess has been an inevitable task,” he said. “The Interior Department you inherited had been purposely and systematically gutted, demoralized, and diminished but, after all, [gutting] federal agencies is a critical component of the MAGA Republicans signature playbook.”
Proof of that is in “the GOP’s recent budget proposal, assuming you can tease it out from the chaos and confusion Republicans are creating with their own needless debt-ceiling hostage crisis,” he said.
Citing McCarthy’s April 17 comments, Grijalva said “my Republican colleagues would make devastating, deep cuts to federal agencies and programs that Americans rely on every single day; cuts will deliver irreparable blows across the government, damaging our economic potential, national security, and quality of life.”
For the DOI, he said rolling spending back to FY22 levels “would degrade the department’s ability to fight wildfires, disrupt efforts to address drought and secure water resources in the West, reduce support for tribal nations, create visitor safety issues in our national parks, and—in an interesting turn of events—curtail American energy development by gutting the very federal permitting offices my colleagues like to complain about as being too slow.”
Republicans, who propose numerous regulatory rollbacks in the massive omnibus package within HR 1, say it is ironic that a Democratic administration suddenly wants to move applications and projects along quickly instead of piling on regulations without providing the supporting manpower in order to purposely slow the pace of oil and gas development.
Grijalva dismissed such “plentiful and, at times, theatrical critiques,” but said it was expected because the DOI’s FY24 budget request is “a direct affront to ‘Big Oil’ and polluting industries” that “empowers Interior with the resources to operate at full capacity and build on the momentum established in tackling climate change, elevating tribal consultation, and building the energy future we all need and must have.”
The alternate, a return to a FY22 budget that would be $3 billion less than what DOI projects it needs to function with expanded responsibilities, he said, is “so the MAGA agenda can achieve its ultimate goal of hobbling the Interior Department to the point of disfunction, and the scapegoating of that disfunction as an excuse to give ‘Big Oil’ and other polluting industries more loopholes, more handouts, and less accountability, putting the facts squarely in the hen house.”
