❓WHAT HAPPENED: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin announced that the EPA may furlough up to 89 percent of its workforce if the government shutdown extends into November.
👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, Senate Democrats, and the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
📍WHEN & WHERE: Tuesday, at EPA headquarters in Washington, D.C.
💬KEY QUOTE: “Our preference would be for the shutdown to end,” Zeldin said, warning of further furloughs if the shutdown continues into November.
🎯IMPACT: The government shutdown has stalled EPA projects like the Brownfields Program and delayed federal rule proposals.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says it will furlough an estimated 89 percent of its 12,000 employees next week if Senate Democrats continue to block government funding. According to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, around 4,000 employees have already been furloughed. However, officials have managed to prevent a larger lapse in staffing due to “multi-year funding” but warned that these efforts are delaying key projects, including the Brownfields Program, which focuses on cleaning up land contaminated by pollutants.
“We have a whole bunch of pots of carryover funding and as that carryover funding runs out, more of the total lapse plan ends up taking effect,” Zeldin explained, continuing: “Our preference would be for the shutdown to end.” He added that if the shutdown continues into the first or second week of November, the agency would have no choice but to implement a third phase of staffing cuts.
Senate Democrats blocked a vote to reopen the government for the 13th time on Tuesday, prolonging the federal shutdown, which has been ongoing for nearly one month since funding lapsed. Zeldin criticized Democrats for catering to a “far-left activist base” and resisting efforts to resolve the shutdown. “Democrats were desperately searching for some kind of … context or narrative to try to explain why they were fighting just to fight,” he said.
Zeldin also highlighted the EPA’s ongoing reorganization efforts, which aim to reduce its workforce to approximately 12,500 employees by the end of the year. He noted that the shutdown has not derailed the agency’s regulatory agenda but has delayed proposed rules from entering public comment periods. “The only impact of the shutdown that I could think of is any proposed rule that can’t start a public comment period during a shutdown,” he said.
The shutdown has also led to the cancellation of nearly $8 billion in climate-focused federal funding, according to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Zeldin emphasized that his agency had already cut more than $29 billion from what he described as a climate “slush fund” benefiting Biden-aligned organizations and solar-related grants before the shutdown began.
Image by Jewish Democratic Council of America.
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