Despite Spending Caps, EPA’s ‘Highest Budget in History’ Proposes Hiring More Than 2,000 by John Haughey – US Politics News

The Biden administration’s $11 billion Fiscal Year 2025 (FY25) budget request for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) complies with last July’s Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) in trimming $1 billion from its annual spending plan, yet somehow still calls for hiring 2,023 new employees.
“I am astounded by this proposed increase” in the agency’s workforce even under FRA spending caps, said Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), chair of the House Appropriations Committee’s Interior, Environment and Related Agencies Subcommittee during a 90-minute April 30 review of EPA’s proposed FY25 budget.
The manpower boost is needed to explain and enforce an ever-growing array of new regulations and rules, such as four EPA released last week regarding coal-fired power plants and those adopted in 2021 and 2022 related to methane emissions, air and water quality monitoring, he said….