[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 89 (Tuesday, May 23, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3090-S3092]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Climate Change

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here to discuss what you might 
call the Scott Pruitt philosophy of environmental regulation. In a 
recent interview, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection 
Agency expressed his view that the EPA should ``simply pass regulations 
that provide fairness and equity and allow utilities to make decisions 
based upon stability, cost, and security to the consumers that they 
serve.'' Did we notice anything missing in that assertion of what EPA's 
role should be? How about no mention of the environment, no mention of 
climate change, no mention of public health? So my 168th ``Time to Wake 
Up'' speech will look at how paid-for Administrator Pruitt is by the 
very industries he is supposed to be regulating. Often, the word for 
this is ``corruption.''
  Scott Pruitt is a functionary of fossil fuel money. He has a long 
record of dark money fundraising and long, cozy relationships with big 
fossil fuel political donors.
  As you can see, energy interests contributed over $136,000 to 
Pruitt's 2014 campaign even though he ran unopposed. During the 2010 
and 2014 election cycles, oil and gas giants Devon Energy and Koch 
Industries--yes, of those infamous Koch brothers--maxed out to Pruitt's 
campaigns.
  Thanks to Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting by the New York Times, we 
know that backing Pruitt was a good fossil fuel investment, 
particularly for Devon Energy. In 2011, Attorney General Scott Pruitt 
took a letter written by Devon Energy, he put it onto his Oklahoma 
attorney general letterhead, he signed it for them, and he sent it off 
to EPA, pleading Devon Energy's anti-regulatory case as if it were his 
own.
  As attorney general of Oklahoma, Pruitt directly solicited political 
donations from companies now regulated by EPA, then regulated by EPA as 
well.
  He spoke at dozens of industry events but never at a public health or 
environmental event.
  He led the boards of political organizations, like the Republican 
Attorneys General Association and its dark money political fundraising 
arm, the so-called Rule of Law Defense Fund, this thing. Pruitt was a 
member of the RAGA executive committee--RAGA being Republican Attorneys 
General Association. He was a member of their executive committee 
between 2014 and 2016, when RAGA raised $530,000 from Koch Industries--
yes, those same infamous Koch brothers--and $125,000 from Devon 
Energy--yes, of the letter he put onto his own letterhead.
  Coal giant Murray Energy donated $50,000 to Liberty 2.0, Pruitt's own 
super PAC, and it donated $350,000 to RAGA between 2014 and 2016.
  The Rule of Law Defense Fund doesn't have to disclose its donors. 
They hide in a loophole in the law. But other public reporting has 
shown that it received at least $175,000 from something called Freedom 
Partners. With a name like that, you know it is up to no good. Sure 
enough, it is another dark

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money group run by several Koch Industries executives. That is not 
Coca-Cola; that is the Koch brothers' fossil fuel processing company.
  We don't know more about this. Why do we not know more about this? 
Because Republicans in the Senate protected Scott Pruitt from having to 
answer these questions during his confirmation process.
  While he was busily helping raise dark money, dark money groups, in 
turn, came back and worked hard to help Pruitt get confirmed to the 
EPA. A Republican opposition research PAC called America Rising 
launched a pro-Pruitt ad campaign, and its dark money arm, America 
Rising Squared, funded confirmpruitt.com. A 501(c)(4) dark money entity 
ironically named Protecting America Now was created solely to help 
confirm Pruitt to the EPA. Its fliers asked for contributions ranging 
from $25,000 to $500,000. Just another grassroots group trying to get a 
good guy confirmed. Koch Industries' own lobbying disclosure forms 
reveal it spent part of $3.1 million lobbying to confirm Scott Pruitt.
  In Trump's science-denial Cabinet, Administrator Pruitt seems to see 
little reason to hide his anti-environment and Republican political 
interests. He has spoken at the Conservative Political Action 
Conference and the American Farm Bureau board meeting. He attended 
rallies with coal miners against his own regulations and met with the 
National Mining Association's executive committee ``to lay out his 
concerns with the Paris accord'' the day before the mining association 
voted to press President Trump to withdraw from that agreement.
  Administrator Pruitt planned to appear as the keynote speaker at the 
Oklahoma Republican Party Gala on May 5. This invitation mentioned his 
official position as EPA Administrator three times. It featured this 
photo of him being sworn in as the EPA Administrator. It promised 
donors a ``once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hear him discuss his plans 
to slash regulations, bring back jobs to Oklahoma, and decrease the 
size of the EPA.'' Well, the 1939 Act to Prevent Pernicious Political 
Activities, more commonly known as the Hatch Act, forbids this, so I 
filed a Hatch Act complaint and Administrator Pruitt's appearance was 
canceled. The Office of Special Counsel is now conducting a full 
investigation.

  But it wasn't just there. He goes to other dinners. On February 28, 
2017, Pruitt was a speaker at a RAGA major donors dinner. You know who 
major donors are by now. Days after the RAGA major donors dinner, 
Pruitt unilaterally withdrew an EPA request for information from oil 
and gas producers about their methane emissions, citing a letter from 
nine members of RAGA and two Republican Governors, who alleged the 
methane information request ``furthers the previous administration's 
climate agenda and supports . . . the imposition of burdensome climate 
rules on existing sites, the cost and expense of which will be 
enormous.''
  There was no public comment period. There was no request for input 
from other States. This basically was a little party favor for his RAGA 
pals right after the RAGA dinner.
  This EPA Administrator has solicited thousands, if not millions, of 
dollars from corporations he now regulates. Our current ethics laws do 
not require nominees in the confirmation process to disclose their 
political and dark money connections, so the Senate and the public are 
kept blind to the conflicts of interest of such nominees, and we have 
no idea how those conflicts would manifest in their offices. Pruitt 
knows who gave dark money to his political causes. The corporations 
know what dark money they gave. It is just the rest of us who are in 
the dark.
  This is new, and this is weird. This was not a problem for President 
Obama's nominees because the dark money political tsunami that has 
swamped our politics in slime did not exist when President Obama was 
elected. It was the Citizens United decision of 2010 that allowed 
unlimited political spending by big special interests, and that 
unlimited money found dark money channels.
  To address the gaping loophole in our Federal ethics laws, I have 
introduced the Conflicts from Political Fundraising Act with Senators 
Udall, Carper, Van Hollen, and Franken. This bill would require 
Presidentially appointed Federal officials like Scott Pruitt to 
disclose their political fundraising, and it would require Federal 
ethics officials to address these conflicts by, for example, making 
sure officials are recused from decisions affecting big political 
donors, making sure the public has the information to know they should 
ask for a recusal because the director is conflicted by reason of his 
political relationship with big dark money donors.
  I wish the conflicts at EPA stopped with the Administrator, but they 
don't. It is a swarm of swampy conflict over there. Pruitt has 
surrounded himself with political operatives and fossil fuel lobbyists. 
The Associate EPA Administrator for Policy previously worked at RAGA, 
the Rule of Law Defense Fund, and something called the Freedom Partners 
Chamber of Commerce--a Koch brothers-funded dark money group that has 
underwritten the Rule of Law Defense Fund. EPA's Senior Adviser for 
Regional and State Affairs came from Pruitt's own fossil fuel-funded 
super PAC, Oklahoma Strong. The Assistant Administrator for 
Congressional and Intergovernmental Relations came from the oil 
company, the Hess Corporation. One Deputy Associate Administrator is 
the former president of the Ohio Coal Association. Another Deputy 
Associate Administrator was a registered lobbyist at the National Rural 
Electric Cooperative Association, where she specifically lobbied 
against EPA's Clean Power Plan and New Source Performance Standard, the 
clean water rule, the ozone standard, EPA enforcement, pesticides 
bills, budget resolutions, and EPA appropriations bills.
  This corruption of EPA is the work of the fossil fuel industry. One 
day there must come a reckoning.
  Just this weekend, the New York Times reported ``How Rollbacks at 
Scott Pruitt's E.P.A. Are a Boon to Oil and Gas.'' The article included 
a checklist of rollbacks that specifically benefit long-time Pruitt 
benefactor Devon Energy--the one that got the letter--delaying a rule 
raising royalties on fossil energy production on Federal land, undoing 
new fracking standards, rolling back rules on the leaking and flaring 
of methane, and rolling back reporting of methane emissions.
  In another matter, Devon Energy had been preparing to pay a 
settlement of over $100,000 and to install emissions scrubbing 
equipment to remedy illegal emissions from a Wyoming natural gas 
facility. Five days after Pruitt was installed at EPA, the company told 
officials it was ``re-evaluating its settlement posture,'' offering a 
quarter of what it had previously proposed to settle the charges and 
scrapping the emissions controls entirely. They know their 
Administrator Pruitt.
  Pruitt's record at EPA reveals he is unabashedly looking out for his 
industry donors at the expense of public health and the environment. As 
far as I can tell, every action he has taken since taking office will 
lead to an enriched industry--at the expense of dirtier air and dirtier 
water--and a more imperiled climate.
  Myron Ebell is someone I don't quote often. He is the head of 
President Trump's EPA transition team and a prominent climate denier. 
He has something interesting to say about Scott Pruitt. He has said 
that he thinks Scott Pruitt is using EPA as a ``stepping stone to 
political office'' and that ``everything he does is going to be a 
political calculation about what furthers his own political career.''
  This is not a liberal environmentalist making these accusations. This 
is somebody who is right in Scott Pruitt's climate denial wheelhouse. 
This is someone from the Trump science denial EPA destruction team. 
This is the guy who is in the club of fossil fuel-funded climate 
denial, and he thinks everything Pruitt does is a political calculation 
about what furthers Pruitt's own political career. If that is the case, 
everything Scott Pruitt does is a conflict of interest, as he sees 
regulated industry as the funders of his next political campaign. They 
pay for him now, and he delivers.
  Sadly, the people who own Pruitt also own Congress. So good luck 
getting an honest look at this mess from our fossil fuel-funded 
colleagues in the majority.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

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  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered,

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