from Reason on May 2, 2025
President Donald Trump released his budget proposal Friday, including $163 billion in nondefense spending cuts (a 22 percent reduction) that will be achieved “by reducing or eliminating programs found to be woke and weaponized against ordinary working Americans, wasteful, or best left to the States and localities to provide,” according to a White House fact sheet. Defense spending, meanwhile, will receive a 13 percent bump and the Department of Homeland Security will see its budget jump by 65 percent, presumably to enact the president’s disastrous immigration policies.
Like other presidential budget requests before it, Trump’s is mostly a messaging document that bears little resemblance to a budget and is unlikely to be fully enacted. Still, a key theme of the proposal is ending funding for what Trump has called “the Green New Scam.”
The budget proposal takes aim at several offices within the Energy Department and calls for $15 billion of cuts from the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Specifically, the budget blueprint cancels the Carbon Dioxide Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act, a $2.1 billion program designed “to establish and carry out a carbon dioxide transportation infrastructure finance and innovation program.” The program is “of so little interest that not a single dollar has been awarded to date,” according to the White House.
Highlights in the Ending the Green New Scam Cuts press release:
- Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) Green New Deal Funding. The Budget cancels over $15 billion in IIJA “Green New Deal” funds purposed for unreliable renewable energy, removing carbon dioxide from the air, and other costly technologies that burden ratepayers and consumers.
- Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Environmental Justice. The Budget saves taxpayers $100 million by eliminating the environmental justice program that enabled a witch hunt against private industry. The environmental justice program gave taxpayer dollars to political cronies who
exploited the program’s racial preferencing policies to advance an anti-oil and gas crusade. - EPA Research Grants to Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). The Budget eliminates funding for woke EPA research grants to environmental NGOs that advance the radical climate agenda. These programs have funded the National Resources Defense Council, which is involved in “climate litigation” against coal workers and was a key participant in shutting down the Keystone XL pipeline.
- Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Conservation Programs. BLM’s conservation programs were abused by the Biden Administration to subsidize “Green New Deal” programs and proliferate climate radicalism.
- Department of Energy (DOE) Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). The Budget cuts $2.5 billion from DOE’s EERE program which funneled billions of taxpayer dollars into unreliable energy and EVs to advance the destructive “Green New Deal” agenda. EERE is also responsible for outlandish regulations that drive up costs for American families, like banning gas stoves and incandescent light bulbs.
- Renewable Energy Programs at the Department of the Interior. The Budget saves taxpayers $80 million by eliminating the Department of Interior’s renewable energy programs that facilitate unreliable energy to the detriment of American consumers, businesses, and communities. This includes eliminating funding that supports disastrous offshore wind energy projects that harm coastal communities, wildlife, and military readiness.
Read the full story here.
Wind Concerns is a collaboration of citizens of the Lakeland Alberta region against proposed wind turbine projects.