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GOP proposes $1.6 billion in EPA cuts, defends $4 billion in oil company subsidies
Republicans unveiled a budget plan on Wednesday that proposed a $1.6 billion cut to the Environmental Protection Agency, an agency whose authority they have sought to curtail, while business trade groups have complained about the burden placed on them by agency regulations. Politico also reported that the GOP's proposal would hit the Energy Department hard, with a proposal to cut energy efficiency and renewable energy programs in half.
Rep. Fred Upton, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has said he favors gutting EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions with a "legislative fix" rather than simply denying it funds. (See our overview of Upton's positions on energy.) He told the Wall Street Journal that his disagreement with the EPA is: "You don't subsidize different forms of power -- you let the market run on its own."
Energy subsidies are not a new thing, and efforts to remove them for oil and gas companies have repeatedly failed in recent years.
This week, when Senate Democrats wrote a letter challenging GOP lawmakers to end to tax subsidies for oil and gas companies "an agenda item that President Obama also referenced in his State of the Union speech"Republicans balked and equated ending those subsidies with raising taxes, which would "destroy American jobs."