A U.S. House budget bill includes a massive cut to NOAA but one that is substantially less than requested by U.S. President Donald Trump’s budget team.
On 15 July, the House Commerce, Justice, and Science Subcommittee approved the Commerce Department appropriations bill on a 9-6 vote. The House version of the legislation includes USD 4.2 billion (EUR 3.6 million) for NOAA’s operations, research, and facilities budget – a USD 794 million (EUR 683 million) cut from the USD 4.9 billion (EUR 4.2 million) Congress approved for the agency in fiscal year 2024.
Despite the steep budget cut being proposed for the agency, it’s actually USD 657 million (EUR 565 million) more than the USD 3.5 billion (EUR 3 billion) the Trump administration asked for in its budget request. Trump has moved swiftly to cut domestic non-military, non-border spending in his second term, targeting climate-related funding in particular.
In the first several months of his new administration, the White House has attempted to freeze grant spending on projects that didn’t align with Trump’s agenda and claw back funding previously approved by Congress under former President Joe Biden. Trump has also tried to rapidly shrink the federal workforce, using the new Department of Government Efficiency – briefly led by billionaire Elon Musk – to implement mass layoffs at NOAA and other agencies.
The first version of the House Commerce appropriations bill, however, doesn’t go quite as far in its cuts as those proposed by the president.
Most notably, the House bill includes USD 65 million (EUR 56 million) for the Pacific Coast Salmon Recovery Fund (PCSRF), which the White House had proposed eliminating entirely. Trump’s proposal was heavily criticized by Pacific Northwest lawmakers, including U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-Washington).
"That would be a catastrophic failure; it would abandon our communities, our Tribes, and our industries who rely on salmon,” Murray said in a 4 June hearing. “Across the Pacific Northwest, salmon are not just fish; they are a way of life, and they are foundational to our economy and our culture.”
The legislation does align with Trump on climate-related spending.
Earlier in the budget cycle, the Office of Management and Budget voiced its intention to slash grant programs, calling them harmful to the nation’s fishing sector.
“NOAA’s educational grant programs have consistently funded efforts to radicalize students against markets and spread environmental alarm,” the administration noted in its “skinny budget” earlier this year. “NOAA has funded such organizations as the Ocean Conservancy and One Cool Earth that have pushed agendas harmful to America’s fishing industries. These NOAA grants were funding things such as George Mason University’s ‘Policy Experience in Equity Climate and Health’ fellowship, a workshop for ‘transgender women and those who identify as nonbinary,’ and NOAA Climate Adaptation Partnerships, which funded webinars that promoted a children’s book ‘designed to foster conversations about climate anxiety’ as therapy.”
The appropriation bill notes that no money allocated in the legislation can be used for climate change fisheries research.
The bill also requires that any oyster recovery projects in the Chesapeake Bay must make those oysters available for commercial harvest within three years in order to receive federal funding.
The House bill also incorporates language from the recently introduced Red Snapper Act, which would prohibit federal funds from being used to enforce an area closure or quota decrease for the South Atlantic red snapper fishery. If passed, that provision would complicate NOAA Fisheries’ efforts to enforce new regulations to help end overfishing in the red snapper fishery, which is already facing a lawsuit from commercial fishers.
The documents released by the House Commerce, Justice, and Science Subcommittee make no note on Trump’s proposal to move responsibility for ensuring fisheries’ compliance with the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act from NOAA Fisheries to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The appropriations bill also includes specific funding requested by U.S. representatives on the committee, including USD 1 million (EUR 859,960) to Maryland for blue catfish mitigation, USD 1 million to Maine for the University of Maine’s Lobster Settlement Index Collector Survey, USD 1.7 million (EUR 1.5 million) to New York for the Billion Oyster Project, USD 1.3 million (EUR 1.1 million) to Texas for the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Oyster Research, USD 403,000 (EUR 346,546) to New York for the City Island Oyster Reef project, USD 1 million to Florida for restorative aquaculture capacity enhancements at the Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute, and USD 1 million to Hawaii for aquaculture workforce development at Hawaii Pacific University.
The Commerce appropriations bill will need to be approved by the full House and align with the Senate version of the legislation before going to the president to be signed into law. The Senate has yet to release the bill text for its version of the commerce appropriations legislation.
