Bush´s 2005 budget request includes $7.76 billion for EPA

WASHINGTON (Feb. 2) -- President Bush´s fiscal year 2005 budget request includes $7.76 billion for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which agency Administrator Michael Leavitt said is sufficient to improve the environment without harming the economy.

The president´s overall $2.4 trillion federal budget request includes a 7 percent increase for military spending and a 10 percent increase for homeland security, but other discretionary spending is being held to lower levels to control deficit spending, according to the administration.

The $7.76 billion EPA 2005 budget request represents a 1.7 percent increase from the president´s 2004 budget request, according to the administration.

"With the president´s budget, we can pick up the pace -- protecting our land, cleaning our air and cleansing our water -- efficiently, effectively and without impairing the economy," Leavitt said.

However, critics said the EPA´s 2005 budget request is 7.2 percent less than the amount Congress eventually approved for the agency for 2004.

"This budget not only shortchanges our environment, it challenges our nation´s role as a global environmental leader," said Sen. Jim Jeffords, I-Vt., the ranking member of the Senate Environment Committee. "Virtually every environmental program under my committee´s jurisdiction has been targeted for funding cuts. Congress will not let this stand."

The 2005 budget request includes $1.4 billion for Superfund projects, $210 million for brownfield cleanups, $65 million -- $60 million more than last year -- to pay for installing emission reduction equipment on school buses, and $45 million -- compared with $10 million in 2004 -- for cleaning up the Great Lakes.

The president´s budget proposal is available online at www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/index.html.