Overnight Regulation: Trump’s EPA cuts face opposition in the House | Feds seek input on prepaid card rules | Consumer safety agency looks to ease regs
Welcome to Overnight Regulation, your daily rundown of news from the federal agencies, Capitol Hill, the courts and beyond. It’s been an emotional 24 hours in Congress, and everyone on the Hill is gearing up for the congressional baseball game tonight, which has raised more than $1 million for charity.
THE BIG STORY
House lawmakers had a clear message for the head of the Environmental Protection Agency: Many of the Trump administration’s proposed cuts for the agency won’t fly.
At issue is a 30 percent cut to the EPA’s budget. Members of both parties identified major problems with it, and pressed Administrator Scott Pruitt to defend the proposal.
The chilly reception Thursday at the House Appropriations Committee’s subcommittee that oversees the EPA’s spending solidifies the long-brewing view among lawmakers that a 30 percent cut to the agency’s budget of roughly $8 billion is untenable.
“In many instances, the budget proposes to significantly reduce or terminate programs that are vitally important to each member on this subcommittee,” Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), the panel’s chairman, told Pruitt at the hearing.
{mosads}He listed off several: eliminating a local air quality grant program, slashing a program to reduce diesel emissions and big cuts to the Superfund budget as areas he disagrees with.
The EPA saw the biggest cut of any agency in Trump’s first budget proposal, which seeks funding for fiscal 2018.
While the GOP has years of pent-up anger against the EPA for what it saw as overreach under former President Barack Obama, Republicans don’t want to punish the agency with the kind of cuts Trump has envisioned.
“The budget that you have come before us today to support would endanger the health of millions of Americans, jeopardize the quality of our air and water and wreak havoc on our economy,” said top subcommittee Democrat Betty McCollum (Minn.), noting that the EPA’s budget would be its lowest since 1990.
The Hill’s Timothy Cama has the rundown.
REG ROUNDUP:
Consumers: In January, President Trump directed federal agencies to eliminate two rules for every new rule proposed, an executive order aimed at trimming down the nation’s regulatory rulebook.
And so, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is asking the public to suggest ways the agency could reduce the burdens and costs of its existing rules, regulations and practices without harming consumers.
But the CPSC didn’t have to and Thursday’s move appears to be a shift.
In a statement in February, CPSC’s former Chairman Elliot Kaye said Trump’s executive order didn’t apply to independent agencies such as CPSC.
Though the agency has looked to follow the spirit of presidential orders in the past, as long as they advance sound public policy and do not conflict with the agency’s critical public health and safety mission, he said Trump’s order “clearly fails” on those accounts.
“To voluntarily follow it would lead to poor public policy decisions by ignoring the many necessary benefits provided by consumer protections that save lives and protect all of America’s families,” Kaye said in a statement.
Kaye has since been replaced by Acting Commissioner Ann Marie Buerkle.
And over at another consumer agency: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is asking the public to comment on some proposed changes to its rules for prepaid cards.
Under the proposed changes, a consumer would have to register their prepaid card in order to dispute unauthorized charges and take advantage of the full slate of consumer protections provided by the rules.
The bureau is also trying to make it easier for consumers to link traditional credit cards to digital wallets that can hold funds. Under the CFPB’s proposal, neither the linked traditional credit card nor the digital wallet would be subject to requirements for “hybrid prepaid-credit cards” — those that allow consumers to borrow funds — such as the required 30-day waiting period to link the account to the wallet.
Another change would allow financial institutions to send consumers their long-form fee disclosures electronically if the prepaid card was purchased in a retail store. Lydia Wheeler has more here.
Energy and environment: A House panel approved three environmental bills on Thursday, including controversial measures on nuclear waste storage and ozone pollution.
- The first would ask the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to update its standards for ozone pollution every 10 years rather than every 5 years, the timeline currently set by federal law. Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce’s environment subcommittee opposed it.
- A GOP bill to advance a nuclear waste depository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada also saw Democratic pushback.
- The panel also approved a bipartisan draft bill to reauthorize the EPA’s Brownfields program.
Want more info? Read Devin Henry’s piece.
More energy and environment: Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke says federal ownership of a controversial national monument in Maine is “settled,” but the management of it may not be.
In a public meeting Thursday as part of his multi-day tour of the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument, Zinke said the monument area’s management might change to allow logging and other “traditional uses.”
“I think the solutions should be made-in-Maine solutions, not made-in-Washington, D.C.,” Zinke said, according to the Portland Press Herald. “I think there are opportunities to do something different here.”
Cuba: President Trump on Friday is expected to announce a shift in U.S. policy toward Cuba that includes restrictions on business with government or military entities, as well as further restrictions on tourist travel, Politico reported Thursday.
Trump will make the announcement in a speech in Miami following the administration’s full review of current U.S. policy.
The administration aims to reinforce certain aspects of the 65-year-old trade embargo, in the interest of preventing business dealings they say only serve to keep the communist government in place while doing little to help the population.
Supreme Court: About that travel ban…
It’s decision time for the Supreme Court.
The justices in the coming days must decide whether to lift the temporary injunction on the ban and whether to hear the government’s appeal of lower court rulings that stopped the policy from taking effect.
If the court decides to take up the case, some expect that the justices will schedule a special sitting to hear oral arguments before they break for the summer at the end of the month or in early July.
“I don’t think they will put it off until next term. It’s too big of a case and too important,” said Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
“If they do, they will have chickened out, from a political standpoint.”
ALSO IN THE NEWS:
Trump touts apprenticeships, turning to an issue with bipartisan support (The Washington Post)
States launch bipartisan probe of opioid marketing and addiction (The Wall Street Journal)
Trump move on job training brings ‘skills gap’ debate to the fore (The New York Times)
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