Democrats Unrelenting in Attacks on Pruitt

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt faces more scrutiny from his Democratic critics in the U.S. Senate as they are demanding to know how he came to any scientific conclusion to repeal the Clean Power Plan.

Led by Delaware Sen. Tom Carper, 18 other Democrats wrote Pruitt recently asking for all of the documents, including emails, memos and meeting notes that might justify his decision. They even suggested he might have played fast and loose with the facts.

“At seemingly every turn, the 2017 Repeal proposal uses mathematical sleights of hand to over-state the costs of industry compliance with the 2015 Rule and under-state the benefits that will be lost if the 2017 Repeal is finalized,” wrote the Senators.

They weren’t finished with their claims against Pruitt, the former Oklahoma Attorney General.

“Denying the science (of climate change) and fabricating the math may satisfy the agency’s paperwork requirements, but doing so will not satisfy the requirements of the law, nor will it slow the increase in frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, the inexorable rise in sea levels, or the other dire effects of global warming that our planet is already experiencing,” said the Senators.

They suggested his math was fuzzy in calculating the cost of implementing the Clean Power Plan. The Obama administration had a price tag of $5.1 billion to $8.4 billion by 2030 but the Trump administration put it closer to $33 billion by then.