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Zeldin Testifies at the Senate EPW FY2027 EPA Budget Hearing, Apr. 29, 2026

April 29, 2026 · PBS NewsHour · 1:46:15

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What happened

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin testified on the EPA’s proposed fiscal year 2027 budget before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works on April 29, 2026, in PBS NewsHour’s live carry of the hearing. Chair Shelley Moore Capito credited the EPA under Zeldin’s leadership with clawing the canceled Green Bank grant funds back to the Treasury, while insisting that the bipartisan drinking-water and clean-water state revolving funds be adequately funded for the small and rural communities that use them to replace aging pipes and update treatment systems, as she stated it.

In his opening statement, Zeldin said the proposal supports the President’s goal of right-sizing the federal workforce, with, as he put it, “a staff not one more or less than what is necessary,” and closed on the leaner-EPA case: the budget “captures significant efficiencies and a return focus on what Congress has directed us to do,” toward an EPA that works “to empower the American people while protecting our nation’s air, land, and water,” as he stated it. Democratic senators pressed him across the hearing on the grant and program terminations, including a claim, as one senator stated it, that attacking the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund could cost consumers $52 billion in lost energy savings.

Why it matters

The EPW hearing is the Senate policy record on the FY2027 request, and it shows the same fault line as the appropriations hearings in a different key: even the chairman who celebrates the clawbacks draws her line at the water-infrastructure funds, which is where the request’s congressional prospects will be decided.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: the fiscal year 2027 EPA budget Zeldin defended on April 29, 2026, and the state revolving fund adequacy question the chairman put on the record at the same hearing. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: PBS NewsHour, “WATCH LIVE: EPA’s Zeldin testifies on Trump’s budget request in Senate Environment hearing” (Apr. 29, 2026, live carry, embedded above; remarks as delivered at the hearing).