On the recordFebruary 16, 2017
I am proud to stand today and support Scott Pruitt, President Trump's nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency. I can think of no one who is better suited or more fully qualified to lead this Agency and to advance within it the reforms it so desperately needs. I look forward to voting to confirm Mr. Pruitt as EPA Administrator, and I encourage my colleagues to do the same. In many ways, the EPA epitomizes the broken status quo in Washington--a status quo that is increasingly and rightfully viewed with suspicion and a certain amount of contempt by the American people. That broken and discredited status quo has been described in various ways: out of touch, arbitrary, inflexible, unreasonable, heavyhanded, unaccountable. These words could apply to any number of institutions or offices here in Washington, DC, but they are the hallmarks of the rule- writing departments that make up our Federal bureaucracy. Technically, these bureaucratic agencies are creatures of the executive branch--creatures that exist to assist the President in fulfilling his constitutional duty to take care that the laws, written by the legislative branch, are to be faithfully executed. But over the past several decades, they have been recast as the Federal Government's center of gravity, both writing and enforcing and, in many cases, even interpreting, the vast majority of laws governing America's society and America's economy.…
