EPA Budget Cuts Flashpoint at Meeting  05/22 06:28

   The head of the Environmental Protection Agency clashed with Democratic 
senators Wednesday, accusing one of being an "aspiring fiction writer" and 
saying another does not "care about wasting money.'' Democrats countered that 
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin's tenure will likely mean more Americans 
contracting lung cancer and other illnesses.

   WASHINGTON (AP) -- The head of the Environmental Protection Agency clashed 
with Democratic senators Wednesday, accusing one of being an "aspiring fiction 
writer" and saying another does not "care about wasting money.'' Democrats 
countered that EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin's tenure will likely mean more 
Americans contracting lung cancer and other illnesses.

   The heated exchanges, at a Senate hearing to discuss President Donald 
Trump's proposal to slash the agency's budget in half, showed the sharp 
partisan differences over Zeldin's deregulatory approach. Zeldin, a former 
Republican congressman, has said his tenure will turbocharge the American 
economy while ensuring clean air and water. Democrats say he is endangering the 
lives of millions of Americans and abandoning the agency's dual mission to 
protect the environment and human health.

   Zeldin, who took office in January, has proposed a flood of changes that 
would sharply reduce the agency's workforce, terminate billions of dollars in 
grants approved by the Biden administration and roll back dozens of 
environmental rules including landmark regulations on climate change and 
pollution from coal-fired power plants.

   Sharp words, back and forth

   Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., told Zeldin that a plan to cut EPA spending by 
55% means that, to Zeldin and Trump, "more than half of the environmental 
efforts of the EPA ... to make sure Americans have clean air and clean water 
are just a waste." If approved by Congress, the budget cuts "will mean there's 
more diesel and more other particulate matter in the air" and that "water that 
Americans drink is going to have more chemicals," Schiff said.

   "Your legacy will be more lung cancer," he told Zeldin. "It'll be more 
bladder cancer. It'll be more leukemia and pancreatic cancer ... more rare 
cancers of innumerable varieties.''

   Replied Zeldin: "I understand that you are an aspiring fiction writer. I see 
why."

   Schiff said the real fiction was Zeldin's apparent belief that he can cut 
the EPA's budget in half "and it won't affect people's health, or their water 
or their air." Schiff said the Republican administrator was "totally beholden 
to the oil industry," adding: "You could give a rat's ass about how much cancer 
your agency causes."

   Zeldin engaged in a similar rhetorical match with Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon 
Whitehouse, the top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works 
Committee.

   Whitehouse said Zeldin and others at EPA have made "baseless accusations of 
fraud" about grants awarded under Democratic President Joe Biden, removed 
"career officials who stood up for the rule of law" and deployed FBI agents "to 
harass career civil servants.''

   Questions over whether Zeldin reviewed canceled grants

   Whitehouse also challenged Zeldin's contention that he had personally 
reviewed 781 Biden-era grants totaling nearly $2 billion that the Trump 
administration later canceled. The grants were intended to address chronic 
pollution in minority communities and jump-start clean energy programs across 
the country, but Zeldin said they were plagued by conflicts of interest and 
unqualified recipients.

   "You don't care about wasting money, but the Trump administration does, 
Senator," Zeldin said.

   When Whitehouse pressed to see Zeldin's schedule to prove he personally 
reviewed the grants before canceling them, Zeldin said he's worked on the issue 
"almost every single day" since taking office.

   "We are cracking down on every waste, every aspect of abuse,'' Zeldin said, 
adding that Whitehouse seemed unable to grasp that more than one person could 
review EPA's grant program.

   "I am insisting on the facts,'' Whitehouse said.

   American taxpayers "put President Trump in office because of people like 
you," Zeldin replied. "They have Republicans in charge of the House and Senate 
because of people like you. You don't want me to go through the list of all the 
evidence of waste and abuse."

   Whitehouse replied that Zeldin should explain why Justice Department 
lawyers, speaking under oath on behalf of the agency, have "said that 
everything you just said is not true. That's what I want."

   A lawyer for the EPA told a federal appeals court this week that the agency 
was "not accusing anybody of fraud" in a separate dispute over its termination 
of $20 billion in grants under a so-called green bank program to finance clean 
energy and climate-friendly projects nationwide.