Interior Secretary Doug Burgum defended proposed cuts to his department’s fiscal 2026 budget before a Senate panel on Wednesday as lawmakers questioned an administration suggestion that some parts of the National Park Service could be managed by the states.
Senate Interior-Environment Appropriations Chair Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and panel Democrats also questioned Burgum about the effect of reduced staffing since the beginning of the Trump administration.
Burgum defended the White House’s request to cut his department’s budget by roughly 30 percent from fiscal 2025, to $11.7 billion, with significant cuts at agencies including the National Park Service and Bureau of Indian Affairs. The request would cut $900 million from NPS park operations, $158 million from the NPS Historic Preservation Fund, $77 million from national recreation and preservation grants and $73 million from construction.
In one document outlining cuts and consolidations, the White House suggested that the NPS included a number of parks that “are better categorized and managed as State-level parks.”
“It’s like me putting my kids in charge of the upkeep for the house that I own,” said Murkowski. “In some instances it might make good sense, but as a wholesale best practice, I worry about how that might impact the parks for our people.”
[‘Skinny’ White House budget leaves some Senate Republicans hungry for more]
Ranking member Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., said the administration was effectively “fracturing our treasured system with an eye on profit rather than preserving our collective heritage.”
Burgum said that the Interior Department was in the early stages of examining the proposal, assuring committee members that it would be done on a “case by case, state by state” basis and that a full list of proposed sites would be provided to the panel.
He added that many of the sites receive few visitors, almost all of them living locally, yet still require federal funding. He pointed to the Knife River Indian Villages National Historic Site in his home state of North Dakota as one such site.
The budget request also included a cut of $107 million for the Bureau of Indian Affairs public safety and justice programs, which the White House said could be replaced by applications to the Homeland Security and Justice departments for grants.
“So I worry cuts of this magnitude can’t be made up for by directing tribes to apply for grants,” said Murkowski, who is also chair of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee.
She and the Democratic members also raised concerns about the staffing cuts at the Interior Department since President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Murkowski said she had hoped that acting Assistant Secretary Tyler Hassen, a former oil executive connected with the Department of Government Efficiency, would have been available to testify on the department’s cuts to staffing and reorganization.
Burgum said that the efforts were ultimately aimed at reducing expenses. He said he had found the NPS has many employees who aren’t directly involved in managing the parks.
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., ranking member of the full Senate Appropriations Committee, questioned his assertion that the employees represented waste or inefficiency, saying the parks not only need people to drive snow plows, for example, but also need people who make sure the government is getting “the best deal to buy that snow plow.”
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