Executive Calendar

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I want to start by thanking my colleague from Massachusetts for the clarity and passion he brings to this debate.

I, too, am here to strongly oppose the nomination of Andrew Wheeler to be the Deputy Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Before I talk about Mr. Wheeler, I want to join my colleague from Massachusetts to talk a little bit about Scott Pruitt and the current management over the EPA. Because the people of our country rely on a strong, effective, and healthy EPA to keep our air and water clean and to make sure people are not living among toxic substances, we need strong leadership there.

In the State of Maryland, the EPA is also important to protect a great national and natural treasure, the Chesapeake Bay. The bay States include many of the States in this area. We have made great progress over the years through the EPA's Chesapeake Bay Program. It was recognized many years ago that when you have a bay such as the Chesapeake, where multiple States feed into it, so that when you see pollution in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, or Virginia, it ends up in the bay, you need a national response, and you need an agency like the EPA to bring people together. That is why the EPA's Chesapeake Bay Program was created. Yet we now have a Director of the EPA, Scott Pruitt, who doesn't recognize the vital and unique role the EPA plays in protecting the Chesapeake Bay.

We know that because, if you look at the budget Scott Pruitt and President Trump submitted to the Congress, they zeroed out funding-- zeroed out funding--a big goose egg for the EPA Chesapeake Bay funding. That is what they did in year 1.

Then, when Senator Cardin and I and others said: This is a really important national effort; in fact, it has had bipartisan support in the Congress, it has bipartisan support among the Governors of all the Chesapeake Bay States, then they said: OK. We are going to provide just 10 percent of the moneys that had been provided for that program.

This is a $73 million-a-year program. It actually needs more to achieve its full effectiveness, but Administrator Pruitt and President Trump provided only $7.3 million in their budget, which would devastate the bay program.

Fortunately, on a bipartisan basis, this Senate and the House of Representatives have continued full funding for the Chesapeake Bay Program for the past 2 years. I thank my colleagues for recognizing the vital importance of that program, not just to the bay States but really to protecting a national treasure.

I guess it shouldn't be surprising that Scott Pruitt's first budget zeroed out funding for Chesapeake Bay protection because, back when he was the attorney general of Oklahoma, he filed an amicus brief in a case that would have neutered the ability of the EPA to actually enforce the pollution protection standards for the Chesapeake Bay.

We can set forth all sorts of standards, we can set forth all sorts of restrictions in terms of pollution that can fall into the bay, but if you don't have the ability to enforce it, it means nothing. It means people can pollute with impunity.

Even before he took the current job, Scott Pruitt telegraphed to all of us that he didn't care about enforcing pollution standards for the Chesapeake Bay.

We have also seen other recent actions where it is clear he has a disregard for adequate protections for clean air and water. The Senator from Massachusetts was just talking about a recent proposal to roll back the auto emission standards, auto emission standards that are essential to addressing the challenge of climate change, that are also vital to making sure we have energy independence--standards, by the way, that would save consumers a whole lot of money that would otherwise be going to the oil companies and the gas companies.

In fact, those new emission standards would save the average American family $300 per year. Apparently, Mr. Pruitt and President Trump want to see those $300 come out of the pockets of American consumers and go right to the bank accounts of big oil companies.

It is maybe not surprising, given the very close relationship between Administrator Pruitt and the Koch brothers, who worked very hard and worked over time on his confirmation to be EPA Administrator. With Administrator Pruitt, they are getting the policies they want--policies that are not good for the health of the American people but very good for the bottom line of the Koch brothers and some of the biggest oil companies in the country.

The Chesapeake Bay and the rolling back of the auto emission standards are just two examples of a record that fails the American public when it comes to the environment under this current EPA.

I also want to talk about the work environment today at the Environmental Protection Agency because my State of Maryland is the home to many terrific public servants--Federal employees, including many dedicated employees of the EPA. You can listen to them, but you can read about accounts in many of the publications we have seen about the incredibly low morale at the EPA.

Leadership starts at the top, and Scott Pruitt has taken an agency with strong morale and led it down the tubes. I guess it is not surprising, since he has been seeking to cut the EPA team, the professionals there, by roughly 20 percent. I should say, he is talking about cutting those folks who are working every day on behalf of the American people at the same time he is increasing the number of political appointees at the EPA--people who really do nothing more than the politics of the Administrator. So he is increasing the number of high-paid political appointees while proposing to cut, by 20 percent, the EPA workforce that looks out for the American people.

Under his directorship, already 700 employees have left the Agency either because they found it a hostile place to work or were actually forced out. So I do find it ironic that the Agency that is supposed to protect the country from toxic pollution has created a toxic environment under its own roof.

Beyond my concerns about how he actually manages his staff, concerns about undermining protections for the Chesapeake Bay and other environmental efforts, we have seen a total disregard for basic public ethics from the current Administrator. His conduct is not appropriate for a public official and has violated the public trust time and again. It seems every day now, when you open a newspaper or look online, you can find another example of the current Administrator abusing the public trust.

We have to ask ourselves whether Andrew Wheeler is going to be someone at the EPA who addresses those serious problems we have with the current Administrator. How will he help stabilize the situation? Will he be any kind of counterbalance on these important issues? The clear answer, from the record, is no. In fact, the clear answer is that Mr. Wheeler would just reinforce Mr. Pruitt's worst instincts. One might say he is a carbon copy of Mr. Pruitt. And when we look at his history--Mr. Wheeler's history--we find a very cozy relationship between the nominee, Mr. Wheeler, Mr. Pruitt, the current Administrator, and an army of lobbyists for the coal industry. In fact, Mr. Wheeler, as we have noted, has been a lobbyist for that industry. When we look at his relationships, we find that he was advising Murray Energy. Murray Energy was at that time a top donor to Scott Pruitt's super PAC. This was before Mr. Pruitt became the Administrator of the EPA. He had a super PAC. Murray Energy, for whom Mr. Wheeler lobbied, was one of the top donors to that Pruitt super PAC.

The relationship between Pruitt and Wheeler and Bob Murray gets even cozier when we see that Bob Murray was a co-plaintiff in 8 of the 14 lawsuits that Pruitt brought against the EPA before Pruitt became the Administrator. So I want to get this right. We have Mr. Wheeler, who is the lobbyist for Mr. Murray, and Mr. Murray joined with Pruitt in filing 8 of 14 lawsuits against the EPA. So we can see that we have a very cozy relationship there and one that will only reinforce, not counterbalance, Mr. Pruitt's worst instincts at the EPA.

Among those challenges is the question of climate change. Just yesterday, in the Environment and Public Works Committee, we had a hearing. We had a hearing on using Federal incentives to have more carbon sequestration, to try to take carbon out of the environment, and carbon recapturing technology.

What was interesting was that every single one of the witnesses-- those called by the majority and those called by the minority--every one of them, when asked whether climate change represented a serious threat, answered yes. All of them acknowledged that human activity was contributing to that climate change--every one of the witnesses, right down the table.

It is also interesting that that legislation, which has bipartisan support, uses taxpayer dollars and, combined with the tax measures we passed recently, creates tax incentives for carbon capture. So we are agreeing on a bipartisan basis to use public funds for the purpose of reducing carbon pollution. The only reason to do that would be that we agree carbon pollution represents a threat.

I will tell my colleagues who believes carbon pollution represents a threat: the U.S. military. I represent the Naval Academy. A little while back, I went out there and talked to the head of the Naval Academy, who talked about the fact that even today, sea level rise is creating threats, and we can actually see the results of sea level rise with the flash flooding down in Annapolis, MD, which is home to the Naval Academy. That is just one small example. Yet, if we look at Mr. Wheeler's record and statements, we find just another person with their head in the sand, and that is not the kind of person we should have as the No. 2 at our national Environmental Protection Agency.

I was looking to see if the No. 2 appointment might provide some kind of counterbalance to Mr. Pruitt. Unfortunately, everything we find shows not only that they had this prior, very cozy relationship-- lobbyist, Attorney General, and a lot of coal industry companies--but on all of the issues that are important to protecting the health of the American people, we have a Deputy nominee who is actually going to take us in the wrong direction.

So I urge all of my colleagues to oppose the nomination of Andrew Wheeler.

I yield the remainder of my postcloture time to Mr. Carper.

I see that Mr. Leahy is on the floor.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source