If you want to pick a fight, make sure your side of the street is clean first. For Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator seemed to have amnesia when he decided to start a tiff with California Sen. Adam Schiff Wednesday at the Senate budget hearing.
“I understand you're an aspiring fiction writer. I see why,” Zeldin said, seemingly calling Schiff’s accusations at the hearing false.
Without missing a beat, Schiff said back, “I understand your view that you can cut half of the agency and it won't affect people's health or their water or their air. That to me is a big fiction, Mr. Zeldin.”
“If your children were drinking water in Santa Ana, Mr. Zeldin, maybe you wouldn't be so cavalier about if there was lead in their water. Maybe you would give a damn instead of coming in here and suggesting that any grant that takes lead out of the water must be 'waste fraud or abuse' because you need the money for a tax cut for rich people.”
Schiff’s reference to Santa Ana, California, is not by chance. The lower-income Southern California city and its children have been disproportionately impacted by high levels of lead both in the water and soil. However, instead of bolstering the grants in place designed to help communities like Santa Ana, Zeldin has been busy freezing over 700 grants in the name of budget cutting to appease his boss.
Daily Kos was unable to independently verify if Santa Ana had programs specifically targeted by Zeldin’s massive day of reckoning, but plenty of other cities who have faced water insecurity felt the cuts. As previously reported, the former New York representative proudly announced on Monday he was pulling the EPA out of Flint, Michigan, as well.
Despite dangerous lead levels that are cause for concern, Zeldin’s severe grant cutting also targeted Flint’s Water System Advisory Council. The council, now left with no funding at all, advocated for the extremely vulnerable community’s say in how their water is treated and received.
Sen. Adam Schiff
Zeldin’s EPA did announce Tuesday that they were awarding $30.7 million in grant funding to help “small and rural communities” across the U.S. “provide training and technical assistance” to “improve water quality.” However, compared to the $3 billion Zeldin froze in climate law grants, this seems like a small bandage.
Even Schiff could smell the intentions of Zeldin from across the room, accusing the GOPer of being “beholden to the oil industry.”
Of course, Zeldin hasn’t tried to hide this either. In a previous hearing, he said that his goal was to bolster the automotive industry and to make the U.S. the “AI capital of the world.”
For a man hired to protect the environmental interests of the country, it seems like an odd statement to make. And Zeldin has been following through with just that.
Soon after taking his role, he set up an email system for businesses to be able to simply send in their requests to bypass regulations. And while this gives businesses more power to overstep their bounds, Zeldin made major cuts to his staff, making it harder for the EPA to even catch these wrongdoings.
And to somehow make it easier on the automotive industry—or just himself—he announced he would be doing away with the pesky stop-start engine feature meant to save gas (and the environment).
All in all, Zeldin’s actions speak for themselves—and Schiff knew that too.
“You could give a rat’s ass about how much cancer your agency causes,” Schiff said.
Correction: A previous version of this story identified Adam Schiff as a representative in the House. Schiff is now a senator.
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