The Senate voted to confirm Scott Pruitt, an outspoken critic of Obama-era climate rules, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency - the very agency he has clashed with in the past - ushering in what are likely to be dramatic changes to the agency.
In a 52-46 vote that passed largely along party lines, the Republican-controlled Senate on Friday cleared Pruitt’s nomination to be EPA chief over objections of Democrats who argued he would undermine the agency’s core mission of safeguarding the air and water. All Republicans except Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) voted for Pruitt, while all Democrats except Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) voted against him.
The confirmation vote passed despite pleas from Democrats to delay the vote due to ongoing litigation regarding emails that a liberal group had requested from the office of Pruitt, who is currently Oklahoma’s attorney general until he is sworn in as the EPA administrator.
Pruitt is expected to quickly begin work to fulfill President Donald Trump’s vow to eliminate a water pollution rule and the Clean Power Plan that forces states to slash greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation. Trump is poised to sign directives setting those changes in motion soon after Pruitt is confirmed.
As Bloomberg reports, Pruitt built his political career fighting federal regulations he said stripped power away from states, often confronting the very agency he will now head. As Oklahoma’s attorney general, Pruitt led or joined more than a dozen lawsuits challenging EPA rules governing power plant pollution, carbon dioxide emissions and wetlands.
Pruitt promised senators last month that his "cooperative federalism" approach would not mean an end to nationwide environmental regulation, but rather "meaningful collaboration between the EPA and the states to achieve important environmental objectives."
"The states are not mere vessels of federal will; they don’t exist simply to carry out federal dictates from Washington," Pruitt said at his confirmation hearing.
Pruitt joined more than two dozen other states in challenging the Clean Power Plan, saying the Obama administration overstepped its authority by establishing statewide goals and giving regulators a variety of ways to meet them. Under a plan he set out in 2014, the regulation would be limited to imposing carbon-cutting mandates on individual power plants, resulting in relatively negligible reductions. Some conservatives want Pruitt to go further and undo the legal underpinning for that regulation: the EPA’s 2009 conclusion that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare.
According to the Hill, Republicans said Pruitt will bring much-needed change to an agency that exemplifies eight years of executive overreach by the administration of former President Obama. “The nominee before us ... thinks it’s time for the EPA to get back to the clean air and clean water business instead, and to do so with an appreciation for the complexity of our modern world,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on the Senate floor.
Democrats said Pruitt’s record of animosity toward Obama’s EPA — including filing more than a dozen lawsuits to block regulations — shows that he opposes the EPA’s most important functions, and that he is too friendly to the fossil fuel industry. “This Trump administration has nominated as administrator at the EPA a tool of the fossil fuel industry, a man who demonstrably will not take his government responsibilities seriously because he never has,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) “He has never taken EPA's responsibility seriously. He has done nothing but sue them.”
Senate Democrats said Pruitt didn’t provide substantive answers to their questions and rebuffed requests for an assortment of documents - including e-mails and other records of his interaction with agricultural and oil companies - by recommending senators use public records requests to get the material from Oklahoma officials.
As Bloomberg adds, Pruitt joined more than two dozen other states in challenging the Clean Power Plan, saying the Obama administration overstepped its authority by establishing statewide goals and giving regulators a variety of ways to meet them. Under a plan he set out in 2014, the regulation would be limited to imposing carbon-cutting mandates on individual power plants, resulting in relatively negligible reductions. Some conservatives want Pruitt to go further and undo the legal underpinning for that regulation: the EPA’s 2009 conclusion that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare.
But the biggest challenge to Pruitt's changes may come from internal opposition from an agency that had made combating climate change its top priority over the past few years. EPA employees have organized to try to block Pruitt, with current staffers protesting at a rally in Chicago, nearly 800 former employees signing a letter arguing against his confirmation and the union representing agency employees launching an online campaign to "Save the EPA."
"Pruitt’s record and public statements strongly suggest that he does not share the vision or agree with the underlying principles of our environmental laws," the former employees said in their letter.
Democrats warned that Republicans could pay a political price for backing Pruitt. "Those who vote for this man will own this vote," said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island. "This isn’t the end of the story. This is the beginning of the story."
For now, however, Pruitt has full control. He is set to be sworn in at 5 p.m.