STEVE INSKEEP, Host: But NPR's Elizabeth Shogren reports that in his new budget, President Obama is proposing to stop funding it.</s>ELIZABETH SHOGREN: Outside schools at East Chicago, Indiana, the buses line up one after another, waiting to pick up kids. Drivers keep the engines idling to keep the buses warm.</s>ESTELLE POWELL: The exhaust from one bus goes in and fills up the other bus, so that when the students get on you know it's not healthy for the children.</s>ELIZABETH SHOGREN: Estelle Powell coordinates regulations for the school bus system. She says that thanks to the Clean Diesel Program, the air will get a lot healthier for kids here. The school system has approval to buy heaters for each bus.</s>ESTELLE POWELL: Once these heaters get on the buses and we will be able to cut off our motors, we won't have any exhaust coming into the air, period.</s>ELIZABETH SHOGREN: Scott Deloney runs Indiana's air pollution program. He says the Clean Diesel Program is so popular that he had to reject 80 percent of the applicants for grants in each of the last two years. He says in recent years all of the money for these grants has come straight from the federal government.</s>SCOTT DELONEY: Eliminating this type of funding will significantly reduce our ability to reduce children's exposure to diesel exhaust.</s>ELIZABETH SHOGREN: Environmental groups, public health advocates and industry groups were shocked to hear the president's proposal to stop funding the program in 2012. EPA administrator Lisa Jackson says deciding to cut it is painful.</s>LISA JACKSON: This is a program that for every dollar spent we know has a history of giving us 12, 13 dollars in health benefits.</s>ELIZABETH SHOGREN: Allen Schaeffer heads the Diesel Technology Forum, an industry group.</s>ALLEN SCHAEFFER: It's an undisputed success - that's what makes it so heartbreaking to see the program be proposed for elimination. And I say proposed because it's our view that this is only a start of this conversation.</s>ELIZABETH SHOGREN: Elizabeth Shogren, NPR News, Washington.
President Obama's proposed budget calls for cutting all funding for a popular EPA program that retrofits diesel trucks and buses to cut harmful emissions. The Clean Diesel program is a rare environmental program that attracted bipartisan support, and the decision to eliminate funding was a big surprise.