Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke told the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources that he supports the White House’s proposal to cut his department’s budget by $1.6 billion, saying “this is what a balanced budget looks like.”
Democrats on the committee “took issue with the $400 million that the national parks would lose in fiscal 2018, which they said would trigger staff reductions at 90 percent of them,” says The Washington Post. “They also questioned the $370 million in cuts the Bureau of Indian Affairs would face, including for education and assistance programs, and $163 million in cuts to the U.S. Geological Survey.”
Zinke argued that increasing oil and gas exploration on public lands would ultimately provide more money for the Interior.
“’In 2008, [Interior] made $18 billion in offshore revenue alone,’ he said, compared to $2.6 billion last year, a drop of more than $15 billion. The secretary did not note that the decrease was tied to a steep decline in oil prices over that period,” reports the Post. “Instead, he focused on how the difference would have covered the $11.5 billion infrastructure repair backlog facing the National Park Service in a single year.”
Some Republicans, including Committee Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski, who wants to see greater energy extraction in her state of Alaska, were pleased by the new administration’s stance on energy and the overall budget proposal. “It asks us to look at areas where we can cut spending and take care of land in hand rather than buying more,” she said.