Emperor of the Swamp
Floor Speech
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Mr. GALLEGO. Mr. Speaker, in Trump's ``Cabinet of corruption,'' one individual stands head and shoulders above the rest. He is a man that Senator Udall crowned ``the Emperor of the Swamp.''
If we created a Mount Rushmore of American corruption, his face would be carved into it. His scandals are so outrageous that even Sarah Sanders has stopped defending him and just started telling jokes at his expense.
I am speaking, of course, about EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt.
I will give you an example. Pruitt tried to use his office to get his wife a Chick-fil-A franchise. When he was questioned about it, the EPA chief said:
It is one of the best restaurants in the country. We need more of them in Tulsa and we need more of them across the country. Anyway, it is an exciting time.
Mr. Speaker, don't get me wrong, I enjoy a chicken sandwich just as much as any other person, but Scott Pruitt talks about Chick-fil-A like they are some kind of social service or some group that hands out food to the homeless. He thinks it is an organization setting up soup kitchens and homeless shelters.
Frankly, this is probably one of the weakest excuses I have ever heard from any administration, but this administration seems to specialize in weak excuses.
Scott also rented a Washington, D.C., apartment from a lobbyist with matters before the EPA. And it won't surprise you at all that he got a really good sweetheart deal. Pruitt was paying $50 a night and was only charged the days he actually slept there.
Now, for everybody back in Arizona who may not understand this, the D.C. rental market is really high here. Let just assure you, what he did was not normal and probably illegal. I am not a lawyer or a law enforcement officer, but this arrangement definitely looks like a bribe to me.
And that is not all. This week, we learned that Pruitt ordered his government bodyguards to seek out a luxury moisturizer that is exclusively offered to patrons of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.
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Mr. GALLEGO. Mr. Speaker, before we go into the top 10, I think one of the pretty scandalous other abuses of taxpayers is the fact that he had his personal detail asking and searching for used Trump mattresses.
Now, this is not a joke, this is not from an episode of ``Veep.'' Your EPA Administrator, a supposed adult in the room, is using taxpayer dollars to try to find used Trump mattresses.
Right now, all I can think of are two things. Number one, this person is just egregiously using our taxpayer dollars in the worst possible manner. And, number two, he is trying to set up one of the weirdest bed and breakfasts in the history of Washington, D.C.
But this is actually real. This is not TV. This is actually happening in your government.
Mr. Speaker, let me go into the top 10 things that EPA Administrator Pruitt has done to embarrass this country, and possible corruption. And 10 is what we have. There are a lot more than that, but we have to at least keep this somewhat bitable for everybody else.
Let me start with number 10, as recently reported: the mess hall. Pruitt has overused his privileges at the swanky, but affordable, White House mess hall, despite being warned against doing so.
Now, the mess hall is basically a cafeteria for the top officers of the White House. I have been in it. I was there under the Obama administration. It is an honor to be invited to go, and it is great food at a very low price.
Pruitt has misused this privilege so much so that he has been asked to not come back. You are that egregious that, as a sitting member of the Cabinet, you have been told by White House staff to not come back to the cafeteria. That tells you a lot.
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Mr. GALLEGO. Mr. Speaker, I also recommend just taking the Metro. It is much quicker, but that is just me.
Number eight, $130 fountain pens: Scott Pruitt has spent over $1,500 taxpayer dollars on personalized $130 fountain pens. Now, I recommend the BIC pen. It does the job well.
But, more importantly, it seems like, on one hand, he doesn't seem to mind spending taxpayer dollars on really expensive things, such as these really fancy pens, and then personally, in his own personal life, he is really cheap by looking for cheap used Trump mattresses. So he is, essentially, using the taxpayer dollar as his personal piggy bank so he can live the lifestyle he wants.
On to the mattress. Pruitt used his EPA staff to help him look for a discount Trump Home Luxury Plush Euro Pillow Top mattress. It is apparently his favorite.
He also inappropriately used aids to look for apartments and help arrange family vacations to the Rose Bowl.
Ted and I are lucky to have some very smart, young staff, and they work hard, but they are not here to be our personal valets. They are here to make sure we do our job well, we get to our meetings, and we have the resources that we need to make the right decisions.
They certainly aren't there to help you find the right type of Trump Home Luxury Plush Euro Pillow Top mattress. I definitely don't recommend that. Or, as Ted Lieu has said, there is the internet. You can find it there also.
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Mr. GALLEGO. Number five, first class travel: Pruitt has spent over $100,000 on first class commercial travel since entering office, citing security concerns, apparently not satisfied with his $3.5 million currently spent on security escort.
Let me tell you, number one, unfortunately for, I think, many Americans, nobody knows who Scott Pruitt is. You do not need to be flying first class for, quote/unquote, security reasons, and you certainly should not be making the American public be paying for your first class tickets.
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Mr. GALLEGO. Number three, unsanctioned raises: In a time in America where every American is hoping to just get a pay raise next month, Scott Pruitt was told: You are not allowed to give your employees--the certain employees that he wanted to give--a pay raise.
He was specifically told: They do not deserve that pay raise. You will not give them a pay raise.
So instead, he used an obscure provision of the Safe Drinking Water Act to actually find a way to give them a pay raise in spite of the White House saying: You will not give them a pay raise.
Now, this would be actually somewhat okay, in my opinion, if he was actually trying to protect safe drinking water, but, in fact, he is not doing that. He is actually only using the fund to pay for these increases for his well-connected friends and get them higher pay.
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Mr. GALLEGO. Look, you have an EPA Administrator who is literally using his staff to go track down and try to speak to the CEO of Chick- fil-A to try to get a very hard-to-get franchise, essentially using his public office to put pressure on them to get a very, very hard-to-get and lucrative franchise.
In any world, if we had just told you that this was being done by 1 or 2 or even 10 people, this all would not just be really, really, really weird, but really, really, really corrupt.
But the fact that there is one person that is doing this, and consistently doing this, and has not been fired by the man who said he enjoys firing people, by the man who had a show for so many years about firing people, and yet for some reason, he cannot find a reason to fire this weird, corrupt EPA Administrator, that is the problem here.
You have a corrupt Cabinet official and you have a Presidency that will not keep him in check.
I yield to my good friend, Ted Lieu, to close.
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Mr. GALLEGO. Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Lieu for his comments during this Special Order.
To finish, we had a President who said he was going to come and drain the swamp. Scott Pruitt is the swamp. He is the biggest swamp monster there is right now when it comes to the culture of corruption here in Washington, D.C.
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