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EPA Gave Volkswagen a Free Pass On Emissions Ten Years Ago Due To Lack of Budget
An anonymous reader writes: A new report suggests that continuing cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency's budget contributed to Volkswagen being able to cheat on its emissions tests. When the test scripts were developed the department — which can still only conduct 'spot tests' on 20% of all qualifying vehicles — was forced to concentrate on heavy machinery and truck manufacturers, which at the time had a far higher incidence of attempting to cheat on vehicle standards tests. Discounting inflation the EPA's 2015 budget is on a par with its 2002 budget (PDF), and has been cut by 21% since 2010.
It can get even more complicated. Consider that there are always static costs - it takes a certain amount of money to just keep the lights on, the management staff paid and kept in offices, etc...
In short, if you cut a department's budget by 20%, without implementing additional measures to control FWA and/or otherwise reduce expenses, you should expect to see more than a 20% drop in performance.
To be fair, the 2010 budget was higher because of specific requests that year for the clean water state revolving fund, drinking water state revolving fund, and the great lakes restoration initiative). Comparing against that year is not apples-to-apples, since that wasn't supposed to set a new baseline.
On average, the budget has increased over the years. Picking those two as comparisons is great for a headline, though!