← Videos · Energy & Permitting

Zeldin Testifies at the House Appropriations FY2027 EPA Budget Hearing, Apr. 27, 2026

April 27, 2026 · House Appropriations Committee · 1:49:55

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin testified on the fiscal year 2027 President’s budget request for the EPA before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies on April 27, 2026, in the committee’s official upload of the hearing; EPA Chief Financial Officer Paige Hanson also testified, as the hearing record shows. The chair framed the request as “rightsizing the EPA” and returning the agency to its statutory requirements after $100 billion in supplemental funding, while cautioning that the committee likely could not accept the proposed steep cuts to state and tribal assistance grants, as the chair stated them.

Democratic members answered that the agency had already shed nearly 2,800 positions — about one-fifth of its workforce — and that the proposed 52 percent budget cut would zero in on programs such as federal support for air quality management, cut by 42 percent in the request, and nearly eliminate the categorical grants states use to run their environmental programs, as the members stated them. Zeldin closed his opening statement by saying, as he put it, that the fiscal 2027 proposal “captures significant efficiencies and a return focus on what Congress has directed us to do,” demonstrating a commitment to “a leaner, more efficient and accountable EPA.”

Why it matters

The FY2027 request — a cut of more than half the agency’s budget — is the most aggressive budget posture of Zeldin’s tenure, and this hearing is its first appropriations record: the Administrator defending the leaner-EPA case while the Republican chair and the Democratic members, for different stated reasons, both put the state-grant cuts in doubt.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: the fiscal year 2027 EPA budget request Zeldin defended on April 27, 2026 — the proposed 52 percent cut and the state-grant reductions both parties questioned at the hearing. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: House Appropriations Committee, “Budget Hearing – Environmental Protection Agency” (Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies, Apr. 27, 2026, official upload, embedded above; remarks as delivered at the hearing).