As EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt defended the administration’s proposed EPA budget cuts before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee, a coalition of environmental, health, economic, scientific, and faith leaders gathered on Capitol Hill in protest.  LCV’s senior vice president of government affairs, Tiernan Sittenfeld, spoke to the crowd, highlighting Pruitt’s record of protecting polluter profits at the expense of our public health.   Check out Tiernan’s remarks below:

Thank you!  I’m Tiernan Sittenfeld with LCV, and it’s great to be here with all of you raising our voices!  I bet Scott Pruitt is about to begin his testimony to defend the EPA’s mean budget any minute, so let’s make sure he continues to hear us LOUD and CLEAR.

Hey, Hey! Ho, Ho! Polluting Pruitt has got to go!

Trump is the most anti-environmental president in history, and he has assembled the most anti-environmental cabinet in history—one of the many reasons LCV has given him an F for his first few months in office. But even for the most anti-environmental administration and cabinet ever Scott Pruitt stands out as the worst of the worst. 

As Attorney General of Oklahoma, he sued the very agency he now runs 14 times on behalf of big polluters, and now he’s working to decimate the EPA from the inside.  He’s going after the air we breathe and the water we drink and gutting protections for front line communities that are the most at risk from climate change and industrial pollution. Why? To pad polluter profits!

Pruitt is testifying during what the Trump administration has labeled “Energy Week.”  But, instead of looking to the future and building the clean energy economy we know will bring cleaner air, healthier communities and good-paying jobs, Pruitt is doubling down on the failed energy policies of the past. Why? To pad polluter profits!

And finally, Pruitt is testifying on the EPA’s mean budget as the Senate prepares to vote on the mean debacle of a bill that is Trumpcare. We know healthcare is critical to protecting public health, especially for low income and frontline communities, but this disastrous bill would take it away from those who need it most to pad the profits of those who need it least.

So Scott Pruitt, I hope you hear us LOUD and CLEAR! What do we want? Healthy Families? When do we want it?  NOW!