[W]ASHINGTON — Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt took hours of questions about alleged but widely-reported ethical violations at a congressional hearing Thursday.
Rep. Peter Welch, R-Vt., joined other Democrats on the panel in pressing Pruitt to explain expenses the administrator has reportedly racked up related to his travel, security detail and office upgrades.
Pruitt has faced a slew of recent allegations of excessive spending on travel and security, as well as giving raises to favored employees from his home state of Oklahoma.
Many Republicans took a softer line of questioning, in some cases offering Pruitt a defense, lending to the partisan atmosphere of the hearing.
At one point, under questioning from Welch, Pruitt said he was “unsure” about a reported $30,000 bill covering the cost of his security detail on a trip to Disneyland. Welch retorted the answer was “knowable,” and not “secret stuff.”
“I’ve been listening to a lot of the answers and the answers are somebody else knows it, and it’s really starting to seem like there’s something on your desk with a motto that says ‘the buck stops nowhere,’” Welch said. “I mean, you’re the guy that’s in charge.”
Pruitt said that he has made an effort to curb spending — such as switching from first-class air travel to coach — and that he has asked that raises given to employees from Oklahoma — where Pruitt was a state senator and later attorney general — be rescinded.
Welch questioned Pruitt about the secure phone booth he had built in his office at a cost of $43,000 according to reports, and biometric locks he had installed on his doors.
Pruitt said that two of three locks at his office needed to be replaced, but he did not give instructions for biometric locks to be installed. When Welch asked him to explain the biometric locks, Pruitt said he was “not entirely sure.”
“Is it the case that you don’t know how to open your door?” Welch said.
In his remarks to the committee, Pruitt said he has “nothing to hide” about how he has run the agency since taking office. Reports in the media, he said, have been “half truths” and “at best, stories that have been so twisted that they do not resemble reality.”
He charged the allegations have been politically motivated attacks on the Trump administration’s work at the EPA.
“Let’s have no illusions about what is really going on here,” he said. “Those who have attacked the EPA and attacked me are doing so because they want to derail the president’s agenda and undermine this administration’s priorities.”
Many of the Republicans on the panel paid compliments to Pruitt for his record on environmental regulation, and praised actions he has taken since taking over the agency, including recommending U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord.
“If you can’t debate the politics in Washington you attack the personality, and that’s what’s happening to you,” Rep. Joe Barton, R-Tex., said to Pruitt.
After the hearing, Welch said he felt Pruitt had been “somewhat skillful as an evader,” and had failed to address concerns about misuse of taxpayer money.
Welch signed onto a a resolution last week calling for Pruitt to step down.
Welch said many Republicans stood by Pruitt because they are supportive of his approach to running the EPA. Democrats, including Welch, have vocally opposed his leadership there, charging that he has been dismantling the agency.
Welch said that he hoped to find “common ground” between Democrats and Republicans over concerns about excessive spending.
“This is a very partisan fight,” Welch said.
