The White House is trying to put out the fire from an AP report saying the Obama administration may agree to some Republican riders rolling back the EPA's power on key environmental initiatives.
In a statement to POLITICO, the White House repeated its opposition to environmental budget riders, but didn't issue a direct veto threat.
"As the administration has made clear, the funding bill should not be used to further unrelated policy agendas, and we remain opposed to riders that do that, including as it relates to the environment," a White House spokesman said via email.
An AP story Wednesday night quoted a Democratic congressman saying the administration said some restrictions on EPA regulations would have to make it into a final budget deal with Republicans.
It's unclear what EPA regulations would be included: GOP riders on the H.R. 1 spending bill targeted carbon dioxide emissions, mountaintop mining and Chesapeake Bay cleanup standards, among others.
Environmental groups were quick to lash out Thursday morning.
"The reports in the press are troubling, and as far as we know there has been no denial or disavowal," Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp told POLITICO in an email. Krupp and other greens are calling on the White House to take a clear stand against environmental riders.
Natural Resources Defense Council spokesman Ed Chen called for an "unequivocal statement to clear up this confusion. What we would like to hear is no riders period."
Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune quickly issued a statement urging President Barack Obama to "stand up to polluters" and reject these riders. "Entertaining a deal to dismantle essential clean air protections is a dangerous zero sum game for the public."
But a former Obama White House official suggested that the EPA will be safe when the negotiations are over.
"My sense – uninformed by any conversations with people over there – is that they feel like if they can get agreement on a number then they can negotiate out the policy riders, take some they can live with and draw the line at the ones they can't," the source said in an email to POLITICO. "Assuming the EPA ones fall into the ones 'they can't' category.
"But overall, it seems like they have been driving more toward a number and that they don't want to go into the policy riders until they feel like there's general agreement on the number, at which point the Republicans look like they are blowing up the agreement over their right wing ideological battles if they push the EPA, Planned Parenthood, health care stuff," the former staffer added.
Vice President Joe Biden, who has been negotiating on the administrations' behalf, said Wednesday that everything's in flux.
"The President and I are not really big on any riders at all," Biden told reporters after meeting with OMB Director Jack Lew and Senate Democratic leaders. "But this is a process which is normal for the House and Senate Appropriations Committees to get into the details."
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) signaled earlier this week that a host of controversial riders may be on the table during budget talks. "We're happy to look at the policy riders, there aren't many of them that excite me, but we're willing to," Reid said Tuesday. "In fact, we've already started looking at some of the policy riders."
Left-leaning Senate Democrats are also up in arms about the prospect of EPA riders getting tacked on to budget bills. Nineteen Democrats sent a letter to Obama earlier this week calling for a budget with "no harmful riders that will enable EPA to maintain the environmental safeguards that have protected the American people for 40 years."
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