Budget chief: Trump won’t continue Obama’s ‘crazy’ spending on climate

President Trump’s top budget official says that the administration will not continue former President Obama’s “crazy” spending on climate change science.

Speaking with reporters Tuesday, the day the Trump administration rolled out its first full budget proposal, Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said climate spending has often been wasteful.

“I think what you saw happen during the previous administration is that the pendulum went too far to one side, where we’re spending too much of your money on climate change, and not very efficiently,” Mulvaney said when asked about climate science spending.

Spending for climate science is significantly reduced in Trump’s budget across multiple agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which would see an overall 31 percent cut.

{mosads}“We don’t get rid of it here. Do we target it? Sure. Do a lot of the EPA reductions aim at reducing the focus on climate science? Yes. Does it mean that we are anti-science? Absolutely not,” he continued.

“We’re simply trying to get things back in order to where we can look at the folks who pay the taxes and say, ‘Look, yeah, we want to do some climate science, but we’re not going to do some of the crazy stuff the previous administration did.’”

Mulvaney justified his position in part by bringing up a National Science Foundation grant that gave $700,000 to a theater company to produce a climate change science education musical. He incorrectly said the grant was given last year.

“Do you think that’s a waste of your money?” he said to the reporter who asked the initial question.

Mulvaney struck a similar tone in March when he rolled out a basic budget outline, declaring that climate funding is “a waste of your money.”