The Senate hearing offered a direct look at a widening divide over the Trump administration’s EPA budget plans, with EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin arguing the agency can maintain enforcement even as the proposed spending level would sharply shrink key programs. Democrats pressed Zeldin to account for what they described as a rollback of the EPA’s role in protecting public health, and they questioned whether the administration’s approach aligns with the agency’s mandate.
Zeldin appeared Wednesday before the Senate environment committee as his last in a series of three budget hearings that week, according to the report. During the hearings, he sought sharply reduced funding for the EPA and argued for a leaner, more “accountable” agency, while responding aggressively to Democratic questioning at times by challenging the committee members’ framing. Democrats said the effort reflects a policy shift that favors industry and deprioritizes health and environmental protections.
Central to the exchange was the scale of the proposal: the administration is seeking a proposed $4.2 billion EPA budget that would reduce support for state environmental programs and for state-administered loans used for water projects. The report said the administration would also halt what it calls “radical climate research,” cut resources for enforcement and compliance, and seek changes that would affect how pollution rules are applied.
Zeldin told senators that the budget proposal would deliver “significant efficiencies and a return focus on what Congress has directed us to do, demonstrating our commitment to a leaner, more efficient and accountable EPA” and “benefits Americans,” according to the report. Democrats countered that Congress would ultimately decide the final outcome, and they argued the proposal nonetheless shows what they said is the administration’s direction for the agency.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said the budget proposal “captures significant efficiencies” only in rhetoric, not in practice, arguing in the report that “Zeldin has executed the fossil fuel industry’s agenda. A massive reckoning is coming.” In a parallel line of criticism, Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said the proposal “reads like a climate change deniers’ manifesto,” after pressing questions about whether the EPA could justify abandoning its duty under what she described as a false “economic growth” frame.
The hearing also featured disputes over the regulatory and legal basis for the administration’s climate approach. In response to DeLauro, Zeldin asked where the Clean Air Act mentions fighting climate change and whether she had heard of a recent Supreme Court decision that restricted the EPA’s authority to write aggressive regulations, according to the report. DeLauro responded that “You do not have the right to say climate change does not exist, that it’s a hoax,” and the exchange continued as Zeldin challenged DeLauro’s familiarity with Supreme Court decisions.
Beyond climate rules, Democrats highlighted drinking-water and enforcement-related consequences they said would follow from reduced funding. The report said Zeldin argued that even with less money, the EPA continued to enforce environmental laws, citing examples that include an agreement with Mexico aimed at reducing sewage flows into the polluted Tijuana River and accelerated work to address radioactive contamination in the St. Louis region. Zeldin also suggested these efforts reflect strict adherence to law rather than the regulatory approach he attributed to former President Joe Biden’s administration.
Republicans, as described in the report, largely supported Zeldin’s message that the EPA could do more with less, pointing to a temporary infusion from the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law that provided tens of billions of dollars for drinking and wastewater loans administered through states. But Democrats said that boost ends this year and argued the administration’s proposed budget would cut off most of the EPA’s support for those state-run loan programs.
Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., told the hearing that the infrastructure-law spending “was never intended to be a new norm for spending.” Democrats argued that without the state support, the EPA’s ability to address harmful chemicals in drinking water would suffer, including concerns about PFAS that can take decades or more to break down. Rep. Jake Auchincloss, D-Mass., questioned the administration’s approach by asking how PFAS in municipal water supplies could be addressed with “90% fewer dollars,” in the report’s account.
Zeldin responded by pointing to technologies and then to congressional earmarks, which lawmakers can use to fund projects in their districts with money that would otherwise go to states for loans. In the hearing account, Zeldin said, “I know that members of Congress are going to raid it, and they have been doing it for a long time.” Auchincloss replied that Zeldin was not in charge of earmarks and that, in the report, “hope is not a strategy.”
The budget debate also extended to questions about pesticide policy and perceived industry influence at the EPA, with a focus on a “Make America Healthy Again” movement that has attacked environmental harms from products like fertilizer. The report said the movement’s biggest champion is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, asked Zeldin whether he understood concerns from those advocates about industry influence and more pesticides.
Zeldin, according to the report, called much of Pingree’s question inaccurate, and he pointed instead to plans to look at microplastics as a potential contaminant in drinking water and an upcoming review of the herbicide glyphosate. The exchange ended with Zeldin saying to Pingree, “I get it, you have an agenda,” and adding, “I mean, I understand you’d like to have a gavel in your hand,” the report said. The AP report also said Associated Press writer Matthew Daly contributed to the story, and that the AP receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy.