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Floor Speech
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I will say that I am here today because we are about to go to the motion to invoke cloture on the nomination of David Fotouhi to serve as the Deputy Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and I very much hope that colleagues will oppose his nomination because he is, essentially, 100 percent on the side of the polluters and not interested in protecting the public health or the public safety or the public's well-being.
If you think about the EPA at its most basic, its mission is to protect clean air and clean water and a safe climate. But in this guy's two jobs since law school, as a corporate lawyer and as acting general counsel of the EPA during the first Trump administration, Mr. Fotouhi has served the interests of polluting industries that do everything in their power to avoid, weaken, or kill the rules that protect our clean air, our clean water, and our safe climate. He has consistently been on the wrong side.
As a partner at a prominent law firm Mr. Fotouhi defended a raft of big polluting interests, including megapolluters Chevron and Sunoco. Now, that is just the tip of the iceberg. Other polluter clients included Aethon Energy, Cibolo Energy Partners, Energy Transfer Partners, Matador Resources Company, and ProFrac Holding.
What did he help them do? Well, he defended one company for dumping tens of thousands of tons of PFAS into drinking water. He defended tire manufacturers for poisoning salmon with their rubber additives. He defended an automobile company against claims of greenwashing concerning their so-called clean diesel cars. He defended another for failing to obtain proper permits, resulting in illegal emissions of sulfur dioxide. And he represented a major defense contractor seeking to shift responsibility onto the United States for environmental remediation necessitated by the company's release of hazardous waste. The list goes on.
As counsel and then acting general counsel at EPA during the first Trump administration, Mr. Fotouhi worked hard to repeal environmental regulations meant to protect human health and the environment by doing two primary things: First, he developed the legal justifications for these attacks; and, second, when they were challenged in court, he orchestrated the strategy to defend against those legal challenges.
Well, which regulations were involved? Actually, a lot of them: rules covering CO
Now, Mr. Fotouhi is nominated to be second in command as the Agency implements the poisonous agenda of President Trump's fossil fuel donors. Chief on those polluting donors wish list is the rescission of EPA's ``endangerment finding,'' a 2009 science-based determination that greenhouse gases are harmful to human health and the environment.
Yes, that was 2009, and when that rule was adopted, it had been settled scientific fact for decades that greenhouse gases harm public health and the environment.
Now, here we are, 16 years later, where the evidence has only gotten stronger, and the looming economic dangers have only gotten more evident, and, yet, he wants to undo that rule. The only people who benefit from repealing the endangerment finding--the only people--are the planet's biggest polluters, who just happen to be among Trump and the Republican Party's biggest donors.
Mr. Fotouhi has served those polluters' interests for years. He is their boy.
Clearly, like everyone, polluters have a right to counsel. But it remains difficult for me to understand how someone who has made a career representing the very industries that destroy our environment, defending their practices that did that damage, now has any business being entrusted to protect us. He will obviously serve their interests and not the public interests. Always has, always will. Even before Mr. Fotouhi's nomination, the corruption of EPA by Trump's polluting fossil fuel donors is already underway.
Where even to begin?
Administrator Zeldin continues his assault on clean air and clean water at what he now contemptuously calls the climate religion, contrary to his repeated and obviously false and empty promises when he came before us in committee.
The list of congressionally authorized and appropriated funding that EPA continues illegally to hold hostage is too long to list here today. Obviously, the biggest target is the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which drives Administrator Zeldin and his enablers at DOJ crazy, and it drives them to conduct that merits both legal and professional liability. I have talked about this frequently as it relates to the repeated misconduct of the unconfirmably corrupt Ed Martin over at DOJ, who is part of this scheme.
Beyond illegally blocking grants, this EPA has put the Office of Research and Development--responsible for conducting EPA's scientific research--on the chopping block with RIFs, reductions in force, and reorganizations imminent because, after all, who wants science where big polluting donors' interests are involved?
Then we have the coming onslaught of deregulatory actions, which will make cars dirtier and less fuel-efficient and more expensive for their owners to run so that Trump's big donors in the oil industry can sell more gasoline; deregulatory actions, which will let power plants and oil and gas facilities spew more carbon dioxide and methane so Trump's fossil fuel political donors can sell more oil and gas.
EPA is even attempting to shut down the program that keeps track of how much carbon pollution industrial facilities emit. They don't even want to keep score any longer.
``Hear no evil, see no evil'' is Administrator Zeldin's motto over at the EPA.
The corruption in this administration is endless, and the corruption related to the fossil fuel industry is particularly evil and damaging. And the service of David Fotouhi in the cause of the polluters who fund Trump and the Republican Party is, in my view, completely disqualifying. On the other hand, for the polluters, it is the reason they like him.
I will vote no on his nomination, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.
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