EPAs budget has been devastated for decades: Heres the math

When Donald Trump rolled out his budget, which cut the Environmental Protection Agency by more than any other department, he said his goal was to “shrink the bloated federal bureaucracy.” He clearly meant to leave the impression that EPA had gotten too big and costly.

But the facts tell a very different story. Far from growing too big, EPA’s budget has been devastated over the last four decades. Other than a bump in the early Obama administration, funding for the agency has been in a long downward spiral.

In fact, contrary to Trump’s implication, EPA’s funding in real dollars is less than half of what it was in the late 1970s. Here’s the math:

In 1979, the agency’s budget was $5.4 billion. In 2017, its funding was $8.2 billion. But adjust that for inflation — so you can actually compare what EPA had to spend on enforcement, state and local support, science and all its other responsibilities — and the 2017 budget was really worth just $2.4 billion in 1979 dollars.

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http://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/370334-epas-budget-has-been-devastated-for-decades-heres-the-math