EPA escapes the cut

The EPA barely escaped becoming collateral damage in last week's budget battle.

"EPA ESCAPES – The EPA has emerged unscathed from Friday’s last-minute budget deal as Democrats successfully fended off GOP attempts to cripple the agency’s climate regulations.

The agreement includes “no climate change or EPA language,” a senior aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said after the deal had been brokered Friday, and the agency went unmentioned in a summary circulated by House Speaker John Boehner. Even a proposed study of the economic consequences of environmental regulations – a compromise Senate Democrats appeared ready to accept on Friday – has been dropped from the final deal, as Obama and Boehner found little common ground on the study’s specifics.

Republicans had hoped to use their budget leverage to strip EPA of its climate authority, as well as to attack regulations on mountaintop removal mining, coal ash waste from power plants and a host of other agency initiatives. Ultimately, the GOP dropped its anti-EPA provision at the eleventh hour, having used it to leverage billions in spending cuts."

Read the rest at Politico's Morning Score.

Plus, the fight over the air toxics protection begins: "On Friday the Energy and Power panel is back in action to take on EPA’s air quality regulations for industrial boilers, power plants and cement manufactures."

Stay tuned!