Ranking Member Johnson and Committee Democrats Recognize the Valuable Work of the EPA
(Washington, DC) – Today the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology held a hearing to receive testimony from the Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Honorable Gina McCarthy, on the recent work of EPA on the Clean Power Plan, the Clean Water Rule, and National Ambient Air Quality Standards for ozone.
Ranking Member Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) said, “EPA’s job is as hard as it is important. For two generations, we have relied on EPA to be the one Federal agency to protect the public and the environment from the pollution that comes with being an industrial society… This may come as news to my friends on the other side of the aisle, but we are seeing EPA actually enforce the law – something that the prior Administration was reluctant to do – while also producing jobs and profits. It turns out that these are not mutually exclusive outcomes.”
The hearing follows almost biweekly document demands this year from the Chairman of the Committee to the EPA asking for correspondence and other documents. The EPA has been complying with these requests, providing over 15,000 pages of documents and engaging in numerous phone calls and meetings with the Majority staff.
Ranking Member Johnson said, “Now the Chairman is trying to paint a picture of EPA as being engaged in secret dealings with the environmental community. He has made much of the Administrator’s deleting text messages, the use of private email by EPA employees, and the use of social media to reach out to Americans to let them know of regulatory proposals. The truth is that no other agency in our jurisdiction has to develop a more public, and publicly-discussed, agenda than does EPA.
“This Committee is not expert in regulatory processes, so perhaps the Majority is unaware of the multiple public listening sessions, the hundreds of formal filings, and the hundreds or thousands of comments that EPA gets and processes in their regulatory actions. It takes years and years of effort for EPA to move a regulation from a proposal to a final rule. You have to ignore all that public comment to believe that there is something secretive about EPA’s rulemaking.”
Ranking Member Johnson told the Administrator at the end of her statement, “There are some in think tanks and industry lobby-shops, and perhaps even on this Committee, whose mission seems to be to attack the reputation of the agency as a way to slow your work. However, it is vitally important that EPA keep working to protect public health and improve our environment. The agency has been doing a remarkable job on that score, and I hope and trust you will not lose sight of the importance of your great public task.”
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