Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke fully backs President Trump’s effort to slash his department’s funding. Appearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee, Zinke justified the proposed $1.6 billion (13.4 percent) budget decrease for the U.S. Department of the Interior. This includes cutting the budgets for national parks by $400 million, the Bureau of Indian Affairs by $370 million, and the U.S. Geological Survey by $163 million. Turns out Zinke also intends to downsize the agency by getting rid of 4,000 employees. “This is what a balanced budget looks like,” he declared. Trying (in vain) to balance the federal budget by reducing staff and robbing the Interior’s resources is misguided at best and, at worst, a dereliction of duty as the head of our nation’s premier land-management agency. Fortunately, senators pushed back against Zinke’s zeal to underfund his own agency, informing him that his reckless budget proposal is going nowhere on Capitol Hill.
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