Another disaster...

Former EPA employees urge Senate to oppose Pruitt

BY DEVIN HENRY

More than 400 former employees of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are urging senators to oppose President Orangutan’s pick to lead the department.

In a letter to the Senate on Monday, 447 former EPA employees said that Scott Pruitt’s history of suing the agency as Oklahoma’s attorney general “strongly suggest that he does not share the vision or agree with the underlying principles of our environmental laws.”

The employees also said they are concerned about his views on the federal government’s role in environmental regulation and his opinion on the science behind climate change.

“Different administrators have come to different conclusions about how best to apply the law in view of the science, and many of their decisions have been challenged in court, sometimes successfully, for either going too far or not far enough,” the group wrote in the letter.
“But in the large majority of cases it was evident to us that they put the public’s welfare ahead of private interests. Scott Pruitt has not demonstrated this same commitment.”

Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Thursday cleared Pruitt’s nomination to lead the EPA.

His supporters — a list that includes industry groups and most Republicans — expect Pruitt to use a potential position at the EPA to pull back Obama-era regulations they consider too broad and potentially against the law.

Most Democrats, though, oppose his nomination, and every one of the Democrats on the Environment and Public Works panel boycotted the committee's vote last week.

Senate leadership has yet to schedule a confirmation vote on Pruitt’s nomination.