Senate Hearing Reveals Pruitt’s Actions Do Not Match Rhetoric

NEWS RELEASE

(Washington, D.C. – January 30, 2018) Scott Pruitt’s appearance before the Senate Environmental & Public Works Committee today demonstrated why his claims to be protecting public health cannot be trusted. Pruitt repeatedly claimed to know that pollution causes cancer, asthma, mental impairment in children, and death. Yet he admitted during questioning that his policies are leading to increased exposure to those pollutants for American families and had no defense to the Trump administration’s proposals to slash the budget of programs vital to cutting this pollution and protecting public health.<

“Scott Pruitt is good at slogans, but he’s failing to protect public health. At today’s hearing, he agreed that asbestos is a deadly product, causing thousands of deaths every year, but would not commit to banning the importation of it. He talked about a “War on Lead” as one of his top priorities, but refused to say he would push the White House to drop its push to cut of the program to reduce children’s exposure to lead. Pruitt said he cares about asbestos, arsenic, benzene, chloroform, cyanide, formaldehyde, lead, and mercury, yet admitted he does not know whether EPA’s ‘once-in’ decision last week would increase these kinds of pollution,” said Jeremy Symons, Vice President, Political Affairs, Environmental Defense Fund.

Pruitt repeatedly dodged question on ethics. He had no answer for what he did on his taxpayer-funded trips to Oklahoma for seemingly political reasons or to Morocco to promote Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) exports.

Administrator Pruitt has demonstrated once again why he cannot be trusted to protect American families from pollution.