Key House Republican willing to drop EPA riders to reach agreement on spending bill

The House Republican in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget said Thursday he would be willing to drop a rider blocking funding for the agency’s climate regulations if the provision gets in the way of a compromise on a government-spending bill.

Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), the chairman of the House Appropriation Committee’s environment subcommittee, told The Hill Thursday that he’d support dropping the rider, along with a series of other riders that block funding for EPA regulations, if it prevents lawmakers from reaching a compromise on spending cuts.

“If we can reach a compromise on the number between the House and Senate and [the riders] become a problem, then they’ll have to go because the number is the important thing,” Simpson said in a short interview with The Hill in the Capitol.

“Would you sacrifice some of those riders for a CR that funded the government at a level that could pass both the House and the Senate? Yeah, you would,” Simpson said.

The government spending bill passed by the House last month slashes EPA’s budget by $3 billion and blocks funding for implementing the agency’s proposed climate regulations until the end of the fiscal year, in September. But top Democrats in the Senate have railed against the riders included in the spending bill.

Simpson said there will be other opportunities to restrict EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. “There will be a lot of venues in which you can do that,” he said.

Republicans are slated to introduce legislation on Thursday that would permanently eliminate EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

But Simpson left open the opportunity that the rider blocking climate regulation could gain enough support to remain in the final version of the spending bill.

“Some of the riders might stay in because I think the majority of both the House and the Senate agrees with them,” he said, specifically mentioning the climate rider.