EPA Chief Scott Pruitt: The Weaponization of the EPA is Over
Meanwhile, Pruitt fends off seething eco-activists and their spiteful lawsuits.
President Donald Trump’s administration has already implemented nearly two-thirds of the 334 agenda according to the conservative Heritage Foundation, which is a pace faster than former President Ronald Reagan.
One of Trump’s biggest promises was to roll back regulations, especially those promulgated under the behemoth of the Environmental Protection Agency. New reports indicate that the agency’s enormous power, magnified under Obama, is steadily receding.
For example, three agency offices are consolidating.
Under the proposed consolidation, the grants, contracts and administrative functions of the National Center for Environmental Research (NCER) — a component of EPA’s Office of Research and Development (ORD) — would be combined with two other offices focused on administering grants.
A new Office of Resource Management would then be responsible for some NCER functions, as well as the work of the offices of Administration and Research Support and of Program Accountability and Resource Management. Freedom of Information Act requests, records management and budget formulation functions from other organizations would also be moved into the planned resource management shop.
Liz Bowman, EPA’s associate administrator for public affairs, described the prospective shake-up as an efficiency move.
The change would shift “staff to the labs and offices where their expertise is most effective,” she said in a statement. “This potential reorganization would not affect anyone’s employment or status, and the management of research grants will continue.”
That the move is likely a good one for the nation and its taxpayers is demonstrated by the howls from green activists. As they often do, they used the children to defend the existence of programs.
“Those programs have been so successful in advancing our scientific understanding and our ability to address the ways that environmental chemicals can impact children’s health,” said Tracey Woodruff, a former senior scientist and policy adviser at the EPA under the Clinton and Bush administrations.
“The children centers were really the first and only centers to uncover the relationship with prenatal exposure to flame retardants and IQ deficiencies in children.”
The EPA’s Chief Administrator Scott Pruitt has been particularly effective in reigning in the agency. As a result, he is the target of a lawsuit by 2 eco-activist groups. Specifically, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility claim Pruitt is violating federal records laws.
…In their complaint, the groups cite news reports that Pruitt prefers to hold face-to-face meetings and avoids email to prevent his comments from being documented. They note that employees told The New York Times that Pruitt prohibits staff from bringing cellphones to meetings and discourages them from taking notes.
Pruitt said during a Senate oversight hearing last month that reports about the ban on note-taking at the EPA are inaccurate.
“I am very encouraging of the folks taking notes during meetings. Because I forget things often and we want to make sure we are keeping track of where we are heading on issues,” he told the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
The groups also point to the installation of a soundproof communications booth in Pruitt’s office, which reportedly cost more than $25,000 and is the subject of an investigation by the EPA’s inspector general.
It is amazing that Pruitt has been able to accomplish as much as he has, being the subject of continuous out-of control green activism and spiteful legal action.
Pruitt spoke to The Daily Signal before he gave an address to CPAC this year. Reviewing his time in the EPA, Pruitt offered his plan for the next phase of his work:
Focusing on rule of law, restoring process and order, making sure that we engage in cooperative federalism as we engage in regulation.
But the key to me is that weaponization of the agency that took place in the Obama administration, where the agency was used to pick winners and losers. Those days are over.
Here is a video of Pruitt’s CPAC address:
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Ron Coleman
Comments
Poor little prog eco groups. They’re so used to suing the EPA and getting their way, plus a jackpot as a bonus. Now that the EPA actually stands up instead of taking a dive and writing them a fat check, it makes their life soooo hard.
Boo hoo.
Poor little prog eco groups. They’re so used to suing the EPA
—————–
That should read colluding instead of suing.
Assasin: It’s worse than you think.
Captain Reynolds: It usually is.
“Poor little prog eco groups. They’re so used to suing the EPA”
The game has been this: The EPA will want to do something, and current law and common sense bar the way. They give a “grant” to an environmental group which has standing. The environmental group sues. The EPA rolls over in court, and the judge rules for the environmental group. Presto! The EPA gets what they want. Sometimes there is a little bonus. Some evil corporation is required to pay millions in fines, which goes to a slush fund. Some of the money goes to the group to pay their expenses. The rest of it goes the way of all slush funds.
Why not divert that money into building The Wall?
…until the next D POTUS appoints an activist as head of the EPA to weaponize it again.
There’s nothing Pruitt can do that the next administrator can’t undo.
Maybe if he manages to abolish it in its entirety, but even then the law creating and funding it is still on the books.
Congress needs to act…
My neighbor has a pond that was built on the property in 1968 by a previous owner.
When he had a problem with the pond and all the water leaked out, he found out that the EPA had no record of his pond, even though it had been sitting right there for nearly 50 years.
Nevermind, an inspector from the EPA did come out to inspect his non-existent pond and gave it good marks.
It just finished refilling last week.
Leave a Comment