The former head of the Trump transition team at the EPA told the AP that he expected President Donald Trump to pursue significant cuts in the agency’s budget and staff. Myron Ebell, who has returned to his job at a libertarian think tank, said it was reasonable to expect Trump to propose a $1 billion cut in EPA’s annual budget of around $8 billion.
Ebell, a climate change skeptic, told the wire service that Trump was likely to seek large cuts in the EPA workforce of 15,000 people. During the AP interview, Ebell said his recommendations to the White House were confidential but his preference would be to halve the staff. “President Trump said during the campaign that he would like to abolish the EPA or ‘leave a little bit,’” Ebell told the AP.
Staff cuts are needed, he said, because the Obama administration “politicized” global warming and published what Ebell deemed “junk science.”