Senate Democrats accused the Trump administration of abandoning the Environmental Protection Agency’s mission to protect human health and the environment at a congressional hearing Wednesday, slamming agency leadership over a proposal to cut its budget in half.

Lee Zeldin’s appearance before the Senate environment committee was the EPA administrator’s last of three budget hearings this week where he argued for sharply reduced funding for the agency, which already has seen its staffing reduced to its lowest level in decades under his leadership. During much of the week, the former Republican congressman from New York took an aggressive approach, responding to Democrats in the House and Senate with his own questions and at times accusing them of being unprepared or failing to care about the EPA’s record.

Zeldin has eliminated major climate change programs, promoted deregulatory efforts he calls the biggest in American history and canceled billions of dollars in Biden-era environmental justice grants to halt what he calls “EPA’s radical diversity, equity, and inclusion programs”.

“This budget proposal captures significant efficiencies and a return focus on what Congress has directed us to do, demonstrating our commitment to a leaner, more efficient and accountable EPA” that directly benefits Americans, Zeldin told senators Wednesday.

The Republican administration’s proposed $4.2bn EPA budget would sharply reduce support for state environmental programs and state-administered loans for water projects. It also would halt what it calls “radical climate research” and cut resources for enforcement and compliance. Officials asked for more money for faster project permitting and to address drinking water disasters.

“Zeldin has executed the fossil fuel industry’s agenda. A massive reckoning is coming,” said Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic senator of Rhode Island.

Aggressive responses to Democratic questioning

On budgets, Congress gets the final say and lawmakers commonly depart from White House requests.

Last year, they rejected most of Trump’s proposed cuts, reducing agency spending by just 3.5% despite an administration request to cut spending by more than half. Democrats said the new budget plan shows Zeldin is a friend to industry and ignores the cancers, asthma and other consequences of pollution.

“The budget proposal reads like a climate change deniers’ manifesto,” said Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut representative and the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee. At a hearing Monday, she asked how the EPA can justify abandoning its duty to protect people in the United States “under the false flag of economic growth?”

The EPA has proposed rescinding a landmark finding that the climate crisis is dangerous, loosening rules from the Biden administration limiting pollution from coal plants, and proposing to scrap greenhouse gas emission limits for certain vehicles.

In response to DeLauro, Zeldin asked where the Clean Air Act mentions fighting the climate crisis and whether she had heard of a recent supreme court decision that restricted the EPA’s authority to write aggressive regulations .

“You do not have the right to say climate change does not exist, that it’s a hoax,” DeLauro said.

Zeldin said she should know about major supreme court decisions. “You’re just somebody who likes to have the microphone on.”

DeLauro said the administration’s behavior was “arrogant” and that it was “making a mockery of what the agencies are all about”.

Zeldin told Representative Josh Harder, a Democrat of California, that data he cited on the agency’s rollback of certain coal plant emissions limits was worthless.

“Have your dog pee on it. It is not accurate,” Zeldin said.

Harder’s office later provided the EPA report from which it said the numbers came.

Zeldin’s vision

Zeldin argued that even with less money, the EPA has continued to enforce environmental laws. As examples, he cited an agreement with Mexico to reduce sewage flows into the polluted Tijuana River and sped up work to address radioactive contamination in the St Louis region.

That work complements strict adherence to the law, a departure from what Zeldin says was the regulatory overreach of Joe Biden’s Democratic administration that wanted to strangle vital industries such as coal.

Republicans were largely supportive of Zeldin’s message that the agency will be able to do more with less.

The 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law provided tens of billions of dollars for drinking and wastewater loans through programs administered by states. That boost, however, ends this year, and the EPA’s proposed budget would cut off most of the agency’s support.

“It was never intended to be a new norm for spending,” said Morgan Griffith, a Republican representative of Virginia.

But that would choke off money to remove harmful chemicals known as Pfas, which take decades or more to break down, from drinking water. The agency’s contention that better technology could do the job for less was unpersuasive, according to Jake Auchincloss, a Democratic representative of Massachusetts.

“How do we get rid of Pfas in municipal water supplies with 90% fewer dollars?” he asked.

Zeldin responded that technologies were promising and then mentioned congressional earmarks. Lawmakers have used them to fund projects in their districts with money that would otherwise go to states for loans – a practice many experts have criticized.

“I know that members of Congress are going to raid it, and they have been doing it for a long time,” Zeldin said.

Auchincloss replied that Zeldin was not in charge of earmarks and that “hope is not a strategy”.

Zeldin was also questioned about industry influence on policymaking, with a particular focus on the “Make America Healthy Again” movement, which has attacked environmental harms from products like fertilizer. The movement’s biggest champion is Trump’s health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.

Chellie Pingree, a Democratic representativr of Maine, asked Zeldin whether he understood concerns from those advocates about industry influence at the EPA and the administration’s support of more pesticides.

Zeldin called much of the lengthy question inaccurate and then mentioned plans to look at microplastics as a potential contaminant in drinking water and an upcoming review of the high-profile herbicide glyphosate.

“I get it, you have an agenda,” Zeldin said. “I mean, I understand you’d like to have a gavel in your hand.”