It’s another day and that means another high-flying Trump administration official is jet-setting around the country on private flights. All at enormous expense to U.S. taxpayers. Nothing but the best for these guys! From the Washington Post:
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has taken at least four noncommercial and military flights since mid-February, costing taxpayers more than $58,000 to fly him to various parts of the country, according to records provided to a congressional oversight committee and obtained by The Washington Post.
Where was he headed that he couldn’t possibly fly commercial? A Trump publicity stunt and a trip to Italy.
The most expensive of the four trips came in early June, when Pruitt traveled from Andrews Air Force Base to Cincinnati to join President Trump as he pitched a plan to revamp U.S. infrastructure. From there, the administrator and several staff members continued on a military jet to John F. Kennedy airport in New York to catch a flight to Italy for an international meeting of environmental ministers. The cost of that flight was $36,068.50.
CBS News notes at the time of Pruitt’s travel, there were commercial flights available to Cincinnati for $350. Instead, taxpayers were billed $20,000. And that trip to Italy? Curious:
He then flew to Italy for an international summit that didn't start until three days later, and he left that meeting a day early. It's unclear why he was in a rush.
Separately, Pruitt's frequent flights to his home state of Oklahoma have attracted the attention of the EPA's inspector general.
Meanwhile, Pruitt is overseeing the gutting and downsizing of the EPA, including this horrific move to stop funding the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division. So much for holding The Swamp accountable for polluting this nation.
Under Mr. Pruitt, the E.P.A. has quietly said it may cut off a major funding source for the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division. Its lawyers handle litigation on behalf of the E.P.A.’s Superfund program seeking to force polluters to pay for cleaning up sites they left contaminated with hazardous waste. The E.P.A. reimburses the Justice Department for that work, paying more than $20 million annually in recent years, or enough for 115 full-time employees, budget documents show.
But Mr. Pruitt has signaled that he wants to end those payments, potentially carving a major hole in the division’s budget, in a little-noticed line in the E.P.A.’s budget proposal in the spring. No decision will be made until Congress passes an E.P.A. budget for the fiscal year that begins in October, officials at both agencies said, although the payments were created by the executive branch, not Congress, so Mr. Pruitt may be able to act on his own. Congress hopes to pass a spending plan before a stopgap measure expires in mid-December.
Mr. Pruitt, a former attorney general of Oklahoma with strong ties to the fossil fuel industry who frequently sued the E.P.A. before President Trump placed him in charge of it, has made no secret of his ambition to unwind its regulations and shrink its work force to curtail what he sees as federal overreach in protecting the environment and public health.