On the recordFebruary 16, 2017
Mr. President, I rise to express my strong opposition to President Trump's nomination of Scott Pruitt to be the next Administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency. The reason is simple. In a choice between corporate polluters and people who want to breathe air and drink water, Scott Pruitt sides with the corporate polluters. He has no business being the head of the EPA. During his nomination hearing, Mr. Pruitt had countless opportunities to answer for his record. His responses were flippant, evasive, and outright misleading. He has been asked repeatedly to provide records from his office concerning dealings with big oil companies, but he told the Senators that, hey, they should submit an open records request, hoping that his confirmation would be over long before those documents would see the light of day. Just a few hours ago, an Oklahoma district court judge ordered a dose of sunshine for Mr. Pruitt's dirty dealings from his perch as attorney general of Oklahoma. The judge has demanded that Mr. Pruitt cough up more than thousands of emails pertaining to his cozy relationship with Big Oil--emails he has been hiding from Oklahoma open records requests for over 2 years, but the Republican leadership is not interested in waiting. Its plan is to jam this nomination through tomorrow--4 days before the emails are slated to become public. Are you kidding me?…





