Ranking Member Pingree Remarks at Fiscal Year 2026 Environmental Protection Agency Budget Hearing

WASHINGTON — Congresswoman Chellie Pingree (D-ME-01), Ranking Member of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Subcommittee, delivered the following remarks at the subcommittee's fiscal year 2026 budget hearing on the Environmental Protection Agency:

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you Administrator Zeldin for being here today. Welcome back to the House.

The mission of the EPA is to protect human health and the environment, not to serve industry. But, so far, under your leadership, the agency has undertaken a series of actions that weaken environmental protection and harm public health to the benefit of polluters.

In the first 100 days of this administration, you have worked to systematically dismantle the EPA, implement Project 2025, going along with the questionable activities of DOGE, all to the detriment of the American public. 

Under your direction, the EPA has illegally frozen funding for the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund to lower energy costs and terminated grants to ensure that all people are equally protected from environmental and health hazards.

You are pursuing a massive reorganization that would eliminate EPA’s science research arm and shuffle highly specialized scientists off to process chemical reviews for industry. The work done by the Office of Research and Development provides the foundation for credible decision-making to safeguard human health and ecosystems from environmental pollutants. It is critical to informing agency decisions on things like the environmental and health risks of PFAS. Destroying this office will cause irreparable harm that may take decades to reverse and reduce America’s standing as a world leader in environmental health research.

I am sorry to say that seems to be the goal of this administration – to hobble environmental protection. This is certainly evident by the fiscal year 2026 budget, which proposes to cut the EPA by almost 55 percent. Under this budget, states would suffer catastrophic cuts. The budget proposes to all but eliminate categorical grants, which states use to run their environmental programs. 

The Environmental Council of the States, which is a nonpartisan association of state environmental agency leaders, sent you a letter that stated that these cuts, “will devastate economic development, critical infrastructure, and environmental protections across the nation.”

Destroying the EPA and eliminating funding for states would create the perfect storm, leaving our country without any environmental protection and giving a free pass to polluters. Finally, the budget characterizes EPA’s climate change work as “unnecessary and radical.”

Climate change is the greatest environmental threat facing our planet, with profound consequences for public health and the well-being of future generations. Ignoring and denying its existence does not make the problem go away. In three years, the US has experienced 73 weather and climate-related disasters, each causing over a billion dollars in damages – this is an average cost of $157 billion a year. 

You’ve seen firsthand what an existential threat climate change is to our future. During your tenure, the EPA conducted a hazardous waste material removal effort following the Los Angeles County wildfires. In the Fifth National Climate Assessment, experts concluded that fires in California and the rest of the Southwest have become larger and more severe, and that human-caused warming is playing a significant part in those trends. And, you agreed in your confirmation hearing that climate change is an urgent issue that must be addressed. 

But your actions as an Administrator suggest otherwise. And instead of constructive leadership and action, the budget proposes to eliminate the office tasked with much of EPA’s climate work. These actions are harming the health of our children and grandchildren and jeopardizing the environment we will leave them. 

Your leadership decisions are endangering the health of millions of Americans, jeopardizing the quality of our air and water, and threatening to wreak havoc on our economy. 

I hope you will reverse your course and I yield back.

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