The Senate Friday confirmed Scott Pruitt to run the Environmental Protection Agency. The largely party line vote was 52-46. “He’s exceptionally qualified. He’s dedicated to environmental protection. And, as someone with state government experience, he understands the real-world consequences of EPA actions and knows that balance is the key to making policies that are sustainable over the long-term.” In a last fit of protest, Democrats kept the Senate in session overnight so they could make speeches about their concerns with Pruitt and his close ties to the oil and gas industry.
Republican leaders in the U.S. Senate rushed through confirmation of Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency without seeing key evidence on his ties to the oil and gas industry.
An Oklahoma judge ruled Thursday that Pruitt must release as many as 3,000 emails containing his communications with coal, oil and gas companies. The emails must be released by Tuesday, after a two-year battle by Pruitt to keep them secret.
The narrow vote Friday followed a bid to delay Pruitt’s confirmation until senators had a chance to see the emails. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, asked the Senate to delay the vote on Pruitt’s confirmation, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked the request.
“This transparency is essential to fair consideration of Pruitt’s nomination,” Merkley argued.
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After the vote, an angry Merkley added: “What happened today was an egregious cover up and a total abdication of the Senate’s constitutional responsibility to vet nominees before voting.”
Why wait for the emails? A fellow Northwesterner, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., spoke Friday to Pruitt’s oil ties: He is a longtime litigant against the federal environmental agency that he has been nominated to head.
“Of Attorney General Pruitt’s 14 cases against EPA, 13 of those suits were joined by the fossil fuel industry,” Cantwell said in a Senate speech. “The attorney general has been known to send letters to federal agencies that basically were identical to what the fossil fuel industry letters were.
“That is, as attorney general, he (Pruitt) wasn’t making his case, he was just making the case for the fossil fuel industry. … We want to know what he’s going to do in this new job.”
Pruitt is a global warming skeptic. As AG, he fought the Obama administration’s cross-state air pollution rule. He resisted the regional haze rule. He took on the clean air standards for oil and gas production sites. He fought the EPA’s mercury rule, and the Obama administration’s clean power plan.
Still, the Pruitt confirmation was not in doubt.
A lone Republican, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, voted against the Pruitt nomination, a testament to how environmentalism has collapsed in the party of Theodore Roosevelt.
Two coal state Democrats, Sens. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, and Heidi Heitkamp, D-North Dakota, voted to confirm Pruitt.
Both of President Trump’s co-chairs in Washington, State Sen. Doug Ericksen, R-Ferndale and former State Sen. Don Benton of Vancouver, have taken high ranking jobs in the EPA’s transition. Ericksen, the fossil fuel industry’s chief ally in the Washington Legislature, is rumored as Trump’s pick as Region 10 head of EPA.
Ericksen has already struck. The White House transition team ordered that EPA cut in half the number of staffers participating in the big annual Alaska Conference on the Environment in Anchorage.
“We were informed that EPA was directed by the White House transition team to minimize their participation to the extent possible,” Karl Elio, the conference director, told Alaska Public Radio.
Ericksen, serving as EPA’s temporary communications director, said it was a move to “limit trael costs.” The EPA was to send 34 people to the conference, which was cut to 17.
Travel costs? Many of those scheduled to attend work in an EPA office only blocks from the conference site in Anchorage.
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