Cantwell, Murray back push for vote of no confidence in Scott Pruitt, Trump’s EPA chief

A record num­ber of Unit­ed States Sen­a­tors have signed on to a res­o­lu­tion express­ing no con­fi­dence in Scott Pruitt, Don­ald Trump’s anti-envi­ron­men­tal Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency (EPA) chief­tain, accord­ing to the offices of Sen­a­tors Pat­ty Mur­ray and Maria Cantwell of Washington.

“Under Admin­is­tra­tor Pruitt,” the res­o­lu­tion says, “the Agency is hem­or­rhag­ing staff and experts need­ed to pro­tect the health, safe­ty, and liveli­hood of mil­lions of peo­ple in the Unit­ed States, with more than sev­en hun­dred employ­ees of the Agency hav­ing left or been forced out of the Agency dur­ing his tenure as Administrator.”

The res­o­lu­tion adds: “Pruitt has con­tin­u­al­ly over­rid­den the rec­om­men­da­tions of sci­en­tists of the Agency in order to pro­vide relief to indus­try, leav­ing in place the use of harm­ful chem­i­cals, pes­ti­cides, and poli­cies that are direct­ly impact­ing the health and well-being of mil­lions of peo­ple of the Unit­ed States.”

With thir­ty-nine cospon­sors, the Sen­a­tors say this res­o­lu­tion has achieved the dis­tinc­tion of bear­ing the largest group of names in Unit­ed States his­to­ry for­mal­ly sup­port­ing a res­o­lu­tion call­ing for a cab­i­net official’s resignation.

The res­o­lu­tion lays out many rea­sons why Pruitt must go, including:

• The non­par­ti­san Gov­ern­ment Account­abil­i­ty Office deter­mined that the EPA vio­lat­ed fed­er­al law by pur­chas­ing a $43,000 phone booth for Pruitt’s office – and then hid­ing that pur­chase from Congress.
• Pruitt entered into a sweet­heart hous­ing deal to rent a Capi­tol Hill con­do from the wife of a lob­by­ist – pay­ing just $50 a night, and only pay­ing for the nights he slept there.
• Pruitt has racked up hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars in bills for lux­u­ry trav­el perks, includ­ing book­ing lav­ish first class and char­ter flights to Europe and else­where, stay­ing in lux­u­ry hotels, and trav­el­ing with a huge entourage of staff and security.
• Pruitt has report­ed­ly reas­signed or demot­ed EPA staffers who ques­tioned his spend­ing habits – at the same time that the EPA Inspec­tor Gen­er­al is inves­ti­gat­ing him for giv­ing unusu­al pay rais­es to favored aides.
• Pruitt has deployed EPA enforce­ment offi­cers to pro­vide round-the-clock secu­ri­ty with ques­tion­able justification.

There has nev­er been any­one less qual­i­fied to run the EPA than Scott Pruitt, which is why it’s so awful that he was put in charge of the agency, which has a vital role in pro­tect­ing Amer­i­ca’s air, water, and soil, not to men­tion the pub­lic health.

For­get about the old adage about the fox guard­ing the hen­house… this is worse. Much worse. Scott Pruitt is a sabo­teur who hap­pens to have con­trol of the orga­ni­za­tion he’s sab­o­tag­ing. He is active­ly work­ing to destroy one of the Unit­ed States’ most impor­tant pub­lic ser­vices from the top down with the bless­ing of his boss, Don­ald Trump. But, like Tom Price, he’s so much of a jerk that he’s even report­ed­ly man­aged to irri­tate Trump, which is some­what remarkable.

Scott Pruitt needs to be gone from the EPA, and yes­ter­day. We’re glad to see so many U.S. Sen­a­tors step­ping up to force­ful­ly say that.