<P> In 2016, the agency had 15,376 full - time employees . More than half of EPA's employees are engineers, scientists, and environmental protection specialists; other employees include legal, public affairs, financial, and information technologists . In 2017 the Trump administration proposed a 31% cut to the EPA's budget to $5.7 billion from $8.1 billion and to eliminate a quarter of the agency jobs . </P> <P> Beginning in the late 1950s and through the 1960s, Congress reacted to increasing public concern about the impact that human activity could have on the environment . Senator James E. Murray introduced a bill, the Resources and Conservation Act of 1959, in the 86th Congress . The 1962 publication of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson alerted the public about the detrimental effects on the environment of the indiscriminate use of pesticides . In the years following, similar bills were introduced and hearings were held to discuss the state of the environment and Congress's potential responses . In 1968, a joint House--Senate colloquium was convened by the chairmen of the Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, Senator Henry M. Jackson, and the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, Representative George Miller, to discuss the need for and means of implementing a national environmental policy . In the colloquium, some members of Congress expressed a continuing concern over federal agency actions affecting the environment . </P> <P> The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) was modeled on RCA . That bill would have established a Council on Environmental Quality in the office of the President, declared a national environmental policy, and required the preparation of an annual environmental report . President Nixon signed NEPA into law on January 1, 1970 . The law created the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) in the Executive Office of the President . NEPA required that a detailed statement of environmental impacts be prepared for all major federal actions significantly affecting the environment . The "detailed statement" would ultimately be referred to as an environmental impact statement (EIS). </P> <P> On July 9, 1970, Nixon proposed an executive reorganization that consolidated many environmental responsibilities of the federal government under one agency, a new Environmental Protection Agency . After conducting hearings during that summer, the House and Senate approved the proposal . The agency's first Administrator, William Ruckelshaus, took the oath of office on December 4, 1970 . </P>

Why does it make sense for the environmental protection agency