Jason Chaffetz: “I thank Mr. Smith of Texas and Mr. Conaway of Texas for their good work on this. In the year 2015, five letters were…”

“I thank Mr. Smith of Texas and Mr. Conaway of Texas for their good work on this. In the year 2015, five letters were sent to the EPA from the Oversight and Government Reform Committee regarding the waters of the United States rulemaking. All went unanswered until the Science Committee threatened to subpoena. Probably what is the most egregious and most offensive to us is even when we do bipartisan work--in a bipartisan letter, we asked the EPA to provide a response to a request concerning collections of use of fees and fines--and even when we do it in a bipartisan way, those go unresponded to. They failed to even provide a staff briefing on the collection and use of fines and penalties, despite repeated requests. We hear on the floor: Well, you can't take away their money, then they won't able to respond. With the money, they don't respond, so they obviously don't need the money if they are not going to respond--even when we do so in a very professional, bipartisan way, asking legitimate questions about the use of these funds and how this Agency works. In the year 2013, requests were filed for information regarding actions of a previous Administrator, among other document requests. Responses were inadequate, and a subpoena was filed. The EPA only began searching for the documents 6 months after a subpoena was issued, 6 months after this happened. This is just not tolerable. There needs to be consequences for this.…”