In the Battle of Pruitt Vs Pruitt, Industry Wins Every Time
Scott Pruitt’s long-awaited first appearance before the House committee that oversees the EPA was, somehow, both incredibly boring and richly informative. While Pruitt delivered his well-honed lawyer act like the seasoned professional he is, dodging and pivoting like a champ, there were a few notable fumbles in his performance.
For example, when Florida Representative Kathy Castor questioned Pruitt about his refusal to recuse himself from decisions involving both his donors and his previous co-litigants, Pruitt refused to answer. He instead deferred to the EPA’s ethics office, who apparently allow him to work on suits he was part of before becoming administrator. Implied conflicts of interest, Pruitt seemed to infer, aren’t a valid reason for recusal if the EPA ethics office doesn’t mandate it.
However, when pressed about his reforms to the EPA science boards, Pruitt’s response was that the removal of EPA grant recipients was to prevent “a perception or appearance of a lack of independence.” Who was making those complaints? Why, the tobacco and fossil fuel industries of course! And whose favorite researchers have gotten added to the board? Those same industries, whose products are regulated by the EPA.
So Pruitt claims replacing independent advisors with industry-funded advisors is necessary to prevent the EPA from appearing biased. But when it comes to Pruitt and his appointees working on cases and decisions they were once involved in, apparently the appearance of a lack of independence doesn’t matter. Even ignoring the fact industry scientists are the opposite of independent, Pruitt’s own standard for avoiding the appearance of impropriety is conveniently inconsistent.
As E&E’s Scott Waldman described in his roundup of the hearing, Pruitt also contradicted the very arguments the people he’s brought onto those advisory boards make about the dangers of particulate matter. Responding to California Rep. Raul Ruiz, Pruitt acknowledged the health benefits to reducing particulate matter pollution. But the Clean Power Plan repeal’s economic justification hinges on zeroing out those benefits to skew the cost-benefit analysis.
Pruitt also said a little more about the Endangerment finding than he has before, making the lawyerly process argument that by referring to the IPCC reports, the EPA committed a “breach of process.” But as Chelsea Harvey at E&E reports, that exact argument was used in a 2012 case, Coalition for Responsible Regulation Inc. v. EPA.
It lost. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit decision ruled it “little more than a semantic trick,” saying the "EPA is not required to re-prove the existence of the atom every time it approaches a scientific question."
Although Pruitt claims a deference to the “rule of law,” (even running a group with that in its name before moving to the EPA) apparently the rule of law doesn’t count when industry lost.
Although Pruitt claims particulate matter pollution is a health threat, his own CPP repeal math doesn’t include it.
Although Pruitt claims the appearance of a conflict of interest warrants removing advisors to the EPA, that same concern doesn’t extend to his own conflicts, or of those he’s bringing into the EPA.
At this point, if Pruitt claimed he wasn’t a robot controlled by polluting industries, we’d want to check that secret superfluous $25,000 phone booth for charging cables and a remote control interface.