Energy & Environment

Week ahead: Obama’s energy budget under scrutiny

by Devin Henry 02/22/16 06:00 AM CST

Lawmakers are ready to begin picking apart President Obama’s 2017 budget.

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell is scheduled to visit the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Tuesday to lay out the president’s request for her department.

Obama is seeking a small bump in funding for Interior, but he’s also asking lawmakers, again, to overhaul some major programs.

{mosads}For one, Obama’s budget provides $900 million for the Land and Water Conservation Fund in 2017, eliminates its expiration date and shifts some of its funding to mandatory accounts. The program, right now, has a three-year authorization and is funded at about half that amount.

Obama’s budget also boosts funding for the National Parks Service, which turns 100 years old in 2016, including an $860 million program to upgrade facilities across the system. A separate $235 million would go toward programs to support further Park Service upgrades.

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee plans to hear from Janet McCabe, acting assistant administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Air and Radiation on Wednesday, for a hearing on the federal ethanol mandate.

The political fight over the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) has intensified over the last few months, beginning with the EPA’s fall announcement on new blending levels and the fight over the mandate during the Iowa caucuses.

The hearing is setting off a new public relations battle over the RFS, with the American Council for Capital Formation launching digital ads attacking the mandate.

House committees have a slate of hearings in the coming week, as well.

Marie Therese Dominguez, the administrator of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, is scheduled to speak at a Transportation subcommittee hearing Thursday on the need to reauthorize the pipeline safety program.

Three Natural Resources subcommittees are set to meet on Wednesday: one investigating water supply issues in California, another looking at “environmental mitigation regulations” from the Obama administration and a third on two bills dealing with Native American issues. Five public lands bills are on the committee’s agenda on Thursday.

The Energy and Commerce Committee’s investigative subpanel is scheduled to hold a hearing on the Energy Department’s “science, environment, and national security missions” on Wednesday.

After legislative weeks dominated by the politics of the Flint, Mich., water crisis, Obama’s budget request and the Supreme Court’s delay of the EPA’s power plant rule, a sense of predictability seems set to return to Capitol Hill next week — at least in the energy sphere.