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Floor Speech
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, the Trump corruption of the Environmental Protection Agency continues apace, so I am here today in opposition to the nomination of Aaron Szabo to serve as the Assistant Administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation over at EPA.
The Constitution provides the President the power to nominate ministers and officers of the United States and the Senate advice and consent power over his nominees.
I think we probably agree that the Constitution means something, that advice and consent is not a mere rubberstamp. But when a nominee comes before your committee, they should provide straight answers to questions. Well, this nominee dodged our questions and then doubled down with more obfuscation when we gave him a chance to clarify through questions for the record. That alone should be sufficient reason to withhold consent until proper answers are obtained.
This character Szabo is credited by name as a contributor to the EPA chapter of Project 2025, the extremist, rightwing, fossil fuel-funded blueprint for dismantling the Federal Government, which President Trump is now dutifully implementing. Some of the environmental highlights from Project 2025? Weaken the Clean Air Act by reversing the endangerment finding. Purge the Agency and bring to its staff ``trauma.'' In case you aren't keeping score at home, EPA Administrator Zeldin is already hard at work on these.
Szabo was an advisor to the America First Policy Institute--the Trump-aligned think tank funded by fossil fuel and aligned with Big Oil interests. He worked as a lobbyist, pushing the interests of major polluters like members of the American Petroleum Institute. Well, chief on the wish list of his former clients is rescission of the EPA's endangerment finding. That is a 2009 evidence-based determination that greenhouse gases are, in fact, harmful to human welfare and the environment. When that rule was adopted back in 2009, it had actually already been settled scientific fact for decades that greenhouse gases harmed the public and the environment. Now, 16 years later, the evidence has only gotten stronger, and the looming economic dangers of climate collapse have only gotten more evident. The only people who benefit from repealing the endangerment finding are the planet's biggest polluters--Mr. Szabo's former clients.
To me, Mr. Szabo's recent work and professional affiliations should also render him unfit for the role to which he has been nominated. Is this really what we want for the EPA? Is this really how we protect clean air--by helping polluters rule the roost?
It gets worse.
When questioned at his hearing about his ties to Trump's donors' extreme anti-environmental agenda, Szabo provided obfuscatory answers. He acknowledged that he was a contributor to Project 2025, which he could hardly fail to do since his name was on it, but he stated that he kept no records--no records--of his contributions to that effort. He was asked whether he had no records because he never had any or because he had deleted them. He couldn't answer. He bumbled, stumbled, bobbed, weaved, dodged, and, ultimately, refused to answer, although he did concede that some of the advice he had provided was written advice.
Following up with subsequent QFRs on the topic, we got from Mr. Szabo a sudden response, albeit one that does not seem credible, particularly in light of his previous inability to answer the question.
He wrote:
Like millions of other Americans, I have been the subject of attempts to steal personal information through electronic means. I, like many federal government employees, had their completed Standard Form 86, titled ``Questionnaire for National Security Positions,'' stolen in 2015 that included sensitive information. I periodically delete old messages and documents that are no longer necessary to help ensure privacy and security to my family, those I interact with, and myself.
Seriously? Szabo had plenty of time to provide that response during his confirmation hearing, but he never mentioned anything of the sort. His contribution to the anti-environmental portion of Project 2025 is hard to connect with any issues of family, privacy, and security.
To be clear, this is not entirely about whether you approve or disapprove of Project 2025. What is relevant here is the extreme degree of evasiveness in answering or, more exactly, not answering our questions. Senators are constitutionally obligated to provide advice and consent on the President's nominees. So we should demand better than this in the people we confirm to serve in the most senior positions in our government. The current status of ``dodge `em'' in our nomination hearings is a disgrace.
Beyond Mr. Szabo's own questionable qualifications and his deceptiveness and his troublesome testimony, we also cannot ignore the full-on corruption of the EPA on behalf of Trump's polluting fossil fuel donors--corruption well underway. I already mentioned the endangerment finding, but there is more. Proposed deregulatory efforts will make cars dirtier and less fuel-efficient. Why? So Trump's donors in the oil industry can sell more gasoline. They will let powerplants and oil and gas facilities spew more carbon dioxide and methane without limits. Why? So Trump's fossil fuel political donors can sell more oil and gas to those facilities. The EPA is even attempting to shut down the program that keeps track of how much carbon pollution industrial facilities emit.
See no evil. Hear no evil.
The Trump corruption train rolls on, and to allow one of the architects of the EPA section of that fossil fuel-funded Project 2025 free rein to dismantle an office that is so central to the Agency's core mission and to the protection of all our constituents will do nothing to help anyone except the interests of the polluters who fund President Trump and, if I may add, the Republican Party.
I will vote no on his nomination, and I strongly urge my colleagues to do the same for a multiplicity of good reasons.
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