The budget that President Trump signed last week includes a big win for restoring coastal Louisiana.
As soon as the new budget year begins, states on the Gulf coast will get a bigger piece of the money made from leasing energy plots offshore.
"We'd been trying to lift that cap for a long time. I saw this bill as a chance to go do that, and I was able to get language in the bill to lift the cap," House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told WWL's Scoot on the Air.
Right now, states on the Gulf coast share a piece of revenue the federal government gets from offshore energy leases. It's capped at $500 million a year, but starting next fiscal year, the cap will increase to $650 million.
"That will mean we will get hundreds of millions of dollars more to restore our coast," said Scalise. "So we'll be able to rebuild land that's been lost to coastal erosion. We'll be able to protect ourselves better from storms."
