FROM: Matthew Davis, Vice President of Federal Policy, League of Conservation Voters
TO: Interested Parties
MEMO: What’s Next for Trump’s Proposed FY26 Budget and The Republican Anti-Environmental Tax Scam

The Trump administration is using every tool at their disposal to try to make unpopular cuts to programs that protect our health and our environment, create good-paying jobs, and lower energy costs. Last week, President Trump released more information on his proposed budget that included extreme eliminations of environmental protections and effectively bans clean energy. At a time when people are facing rising costs and anticipating another summer of heatwaves, Trump is doing everything he can to satisfy his billionaire buddies, including canceling funds that ensure access to clean water and support clean energy initiatives, while cutting taxes for corporate polluters.

Up against the backdrop of a House Republican reconciliation effort that takes a sledgehammer to clean energy tax credits, public lands, and environmental protections, the President’s budget released late last week is just the latest attempt to slash programs that help working people and our communities. Here’s what we’re watching on both fronts:

Trump’s FY26 Budget Proposal Has Awful Cuts While Enriching His Fossil Fuel Billionaire Buddies

Last week, Trump released his proposed budget which includes extreme cuts to crucial resources like renewable energy, the electricity grid, and the Environmental Protection Agency to benefit Trump’s billionaire Big Oil executives at the expense of the American people. These cuts include:

• 90% cut to clean water funding, which supports access to clean drinking water.
• 54.5% cut to the Environmental Protection Agency, including gutting core EPA responsibilities like reviewing toxic chemicals’ risks and Superfund cleanup and eliminating environmental justice programs.  
• Functionally bans clean energy through a massive 74% cut to the DOE’s Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy program and by eliminating offshore wind programs at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM). 
• Cuts 30% of National Parks Service and 72% of National Conservation Lands funding in order to gut national monuments protections and hand over our parks and public lands to states, putting them at risk of being sold to Big Polluters. 
• Unlawfully raids the Land and Water Conservation Fund for non-conservation purposes, going against the express purpose of the broadly bipartisan Great American Outdoors Act to ensure access to our public lands.
• Proposes a $1.36 billion cut to the Forest Service, including cuts to forest health programs, wildfire risk reduction and fire departments, and forestry and wildfire research. 

Let’s be real: appropriations bills require bipartisan support, and Republicans know that Trump’s extreme anti-environmental cuts stand no chance of earning Democratic support and becoming law. As the House Appropriations Committee begins marking up bills this month, Congress must ignore the extreme anti-environmental voices (like Project 2025 architect and Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, who is testifying before the committee this week) and instead work together to responsibly fund environmental protections, ensure clean energy efforts aren’t stalled, and prevent the loss of high-paying jobs.   

The Anti-Environmental Billionaire Tax Scam Is The Same: More Cuts, More Problems

At the same time, the Senate is operating under a lightning-fast self-imposed deadline of July 4th to get to President Trump’s desk the Big Ugly bill, which as it stands is a sweeping measure that amounts to the most anti-environmental bill in our nation’s history. The bill includes 78 anti-environmental provisions and major handouts to Big Oil, including:

• Selling off our public lands and waters to billionaire polluters damaging our communities, water and public health.
• Increasing families’ energy costs by ending clean energy programs, rebates and incentives and repealing vehicle efficiency standards.
• Putting polluting billionaires above the law by creating pay-to-play schemes and other sweetheart deals for oil and gas executives to jam through massive polluting infrastructure projects while sidestepping review, community input, and judicial scrutiny for drilling, pipelines, and methane gas exports.
• Threatening our health and increasing families’ medical costs by eliminating pollution reduction programs that clean up our schools, dirty diesel trucks and buses, and ports all while cutting funding for communities to even be able to track harmful air pollution.
• Gutting widely-supported clean energy tax credits and  investments, which means higher electricity costs for struggling families and businesses, tanking the U.S. manufacturing resurgence, and ceding global leadership on innovation.

The Republican majority in the Senate is razor-thin, and a number of Republican senators have already spoken out against the House’s sledgehammer approach to clean energy incentives. We call on them and their colleagues to deliver on commitments to ensure investments in affordable, clean energy continue. The Senate must fix this bill that only benefits Trump’s and Republicans’ Big Oil and billionaire backers, and if not, they must oppose it.

What’s next for the proposed budget and Reconciliation

While these two efforts are independent of each other, the goal is the same: provide handouts to their billionaire Big Oil executive buddies. This month, while Trump and congressional Republicans rush to destroy environmental protections and clean energy initiatives that help working families keep costs low, create high-paying jobs, and ensure access to clean air and water, they’ll also begin fleshing out their extreme anti-environmental Fiscal Year 2026 Budget. With Republicans in Congress hard at work to make these extreme cuts that cannot garner 60 votes in the Senate, we will not stop fighting to ensure that environmental protections remain funded and intact.  

As we head into this critical month, here are some key questions we are eager to have answered: 

• How will Russell Vought justify his extreme anti-environmental budget cuts and illegal cancellation of critical funds at his House Appropriations Committee budget hearing this Wednesday?
• Will Senate Republicans defend clean energy progress? Or will they side with billionaires and Big Oil and raise energy costs for hardworking families?
• Will House Republicans go along with Trump’s extreme budget cuts? Will they listen to the most extreme anti-environmental voices among their conference and risk a government shutdown? Or will they work across the aisle to actually pass spending bills that responsibly fund environmental protections?

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