Report: EPA staff could be cut in HALF under Trump admin

On the campaign trail in 2016, President Donald Trump promised to drastically scale back the Environmental Protection Agency, vowing to "take a tremendous amount out." A new report from the Washington Examiner shows that after the first year of the Trump presidency, the administration is on schedule to reduce the EPA workforce by half.

“We’re proud to report that we’re reducing the size of government, protecting taxpayer dollars and staying true to our core mission of protecting the environment,” EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt told the Examiner.

According to the report, if everyone scheduled to retire leaves by 2021, the EPA's staff will have been reduced from nearly 15,000 employees to below 8,000, a 47 percent cut. To get these numbers, Administrator Pruitt has instituted a hiring freeze and has offered attractive retirement benefits to encourage people to leave.

“We're happy to be at Reagan-level employment numbers and the future retirements shows a preview of how low we could get during this administration. It would be fair to say anywhere from 25 to 47 percent of EPA could retire during this administration," an EPA official said.

Speaking at a 2016 Republican presidential primary debate in Michigan, Trump pledged that if he were elected president, there would only be "tidbits" of the EPA left. "Department of Environmental Protection: We are going to get rid of it in almost every form. We’re going to have little tidbits left. But we’re going to take a tremendous amount out," he said.

Consider this another swamp-draining promise the president is on track to keeping.

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