Awwww! Scott Pruitt May Be Losing GOP Support - But Because Of Scandals, Not Policy
Other than Chuck Grassley, that is . . .
Scott Pruitt for now appears to be staying in President Trump's good graces, but political support for the embattled EPA administrator seems to be waning on Capitol Hill.
Just this week alone, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa became the first GOP senator to publicly muse that it might be time for Pruitt to go, telling reporters that he was "done playing around" with EPA over the direction of the renewable fuel standard, which is crucial to his corn-growing state (E&E News PM, May 15). Grassley's comments came the day after the conservative Weekly Standard concluded that Pruitt's mounting ethics questions mean "the time has come for him to go."
Pruitt's long-anticipated appearance yesterday before the Senate Interior, Environment and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee, which writes his annual budget, seemed to do little to shore up his support among the GOP. While senators often have to juggle multiple events on any given day, only half of the Republicans on the panel showed up to question the administrator.
Subcommittee Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who has grown weary of fielding questions from reporters about allegations involving Pruitt, bluntly let him know it at the outset of the hearing. While praising the direction of policy at EPA during Pruitt's tenure, she lamented that those efforts were being overshadowed by a barrage of negative headlines about ethical questions she deemed "legitimate."
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https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060081933