The effort to find waste and misuse of taxpayer money spent in the name of pet projects supporting “environmental justice” or climate change zealotry has produced a long list of terrible spending totaling more than $22 billion by the Biden administration, which I have since ended for quick savings.
The most recent efficiency I have found as part of our ongoing dedication to openness and appropriate expenditure is the shutdown of the Biden administration’s rarely visited Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) museum. Built to Smithsonian standards, this cost a staggering $4 million government money; yearly running costs exceeded $600,000.
Housed under the main floor of EPA headquarters in Washington, D.C., the museum itself is about the size of an apartment at around 1,600 square feet. Between May 2024 and February 2025, it had under 2,000 outside guests. Even the least attended Smithsonian Museum gets eight times the visits in a one-year period.
The millions of dollars spent to build this one-room, little-trafficked, so-called “museum” inside EPA with hundreds of thousands of dollars in operational costs annually is yet another example of waste by the Biden administration that could have been spent on providing clean air, land and water to neglected areas.
EPA employees made up over 40% of visitors; although the museum was free, the expense to taxpayers each outside visitor came close to $315 per person.
Other yearly expenses at the expense of the American taxpayer included more than $123,000 on cleaning and gardening, more than $207,000 for security guards, $54,000 for magnetometer and X-ray maintenance, more than $54,000 on storage, and over $40,000 for maintenance of AV equipment.
This museum is a perfect example of a larger trend we have found: monies being siphoned from the agency’s main goal to support projects under the cover of environmental stewardship promoting partisan beliefs. Imagine the progress EPA could have achieved by financing the replacement of lead pipes, or remediation of superfund sites languishing on the National Priorities List, or state and local initiatives to enhance air monitoring and other measures to improve air quality.
Although you may think the history of the agency—founded under President Richard Nixon—and its goal of safeguarding human health and the environment would be nonpartisan, the Biden administration decided to curate the museum with a great disparity of awareness between 2014 and Jan. 20, 2021. Democrat administrations’ work is likewise given more importance than Republican administrations’ effort.
Instead of emphasizing the statutory job EPA performs everyday to provide clean air, land and water to Americans, Biden’s EPA preferred the inclusion of a deluge of “environmental justice” and climate change material to spread the fearmongering strategies of the extreme left.
“Today’s EPA” features one exhibit that states, “The EPA protects human health and the environment by developing and carrying out economic protections; advancing environmental justice, equity, and civil rights compliance…” Another praises the Biden EPA’s creation of an EJ office, EJ initiatives, and their Journey to Justice Tour.
The first Trump EPA’s notable achievements—including a decrease in combined emissions of criteria pollutants and their precursors, the first ever thorough national action plan to tackle PFAS, or the first update to the Lead and Copper Rule in almost 30 years—are not mentioned.
I would wager that the record-breaking emergency response to the terrible flames in Los Angeles under President Donald Trump’s leadership would never get a moment in the spotlight. Projected to take years, the greatest wildfire hazardous materials cleanup in EPA history was completed in 28 days.
These are the achievements deserving of celebration—not via costly museum displays funded by taxpayers but rather by better people and cleaner communities.
Self-congratulatory displays and ideologically motivated projects do not provide the basis of good environmental stewardship; rather, it is developed via sensible, affordable activities that provide observable benefits to human health and environmental quality. The Biden administration ignored these basic values and used taxpayer money to support political stories.
Our new path is obvious under President Trump’s guidance. Every program has to show value; every taxpayer dollar spent has to be justified; every project has to help us fulfill our main goal. The museum’s closing is only one part of our more general dedication to openness and financial sustainability.
We are determined to be prudent stewards of taxpayer funds. To far, our examination and cancellation of unnecessary initiatives has produced $22 billion in public savings.
Eliminating needless expenditure and concentrating on giving all Americans clean air, land, and water helps us to improve our capacity to handle environmental issues. The museum’s closing will save $600,000 yearly—funds that might help initiatives to provide genuine environmental advantages to neglected areas.
This is about increasing our dedication to environmental preservation by means of sensible use of public money, not about reducing it. Gone are the days of unrestrained expenditure on monuments to Leftist egos. Every choice will be guided by budgetary restraint and mission emphasis under our direction. The American people deserve no less.