Texas representative Lamar Smith is the chair of the House Science committee where he has been abusing his powers in almost too many ways to count. Recently his tactics of bogging science down in “inquiries” and “investigations” over funding has been picked up by the Trump administration and Rep. Smith wants to ride that support into the dark ages. He’s going to investigate the EPA with the great title “Making the EPA Great Again.” Seriously, that’s the name of his investigation proceedings.
The hearing will feature four witnesses, three called by Republicans and one by Democrats, who will "discuss how EPA can pursue environmental protection and protect public health by relying on sound science," according to an announcement of the hearing.
This is Rep. Smith’s chance at getting his Secret Science Reform Act of 2015 through after it failed to clear the Senate a little over a year ago. Here’s what Rep. Smith was trying to accomplish with that act:
This bill would prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from proposing, finalizing or disseminating any rule, regulation or other "covered action" unless all scientific and technical information relied upon to support that decision is made available to the public in a manner where the research can be independently analyzed and substantially reproduced. While this appears to be a reform that provides greater public transparency in agency rulemaking, these new requirements would force the EPA to ignore any scientific information related to personal health and other confidential data legally protected from disclosure – jeopardizing the agency’s ability to use best-available scientific data and weakening its scientific integrity....
Further, by requiring EPA to maintain detailed descriptions of all materials, data, codes and models used to create rules, as well as instructions on how to access and use them, the agency would be forced to waste limited funds working through burdensome reporting requirements instead of important public health protections.
Rep. Smith has tweeted out Breitbart climate denial propaganda and told people “Better to get your news directly from the President. In fact, it might be the only way to get the unvarnished truth.” He really said that. You don’t get to be a 16-term representative from Texas without swallowing the Kool-Aid made out of oil and Rep. Smith carries a lot of oil for companies like ExxonMobil in their fight against the fact of man-made climate change. Rep. Lamar Smith is a purposefully obtuse man, the absolute opposite of what is needed in any real “investigation” of anything. You would be much better off getting someone who spends their career testing hypothesis to collect data to then make decisions on—like a scientist.