President Trump’s most recent Environmental Protection Agency pick shouldn’t be controversial. Susan Bodine has served as a legal counsel in both chambers of Congress and worked previously at the EPA under both President George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Bipartisan, experienced, and qualified, she seems like a perfect fit.
Even Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware agrees, but that doesn’t mean he supports her nomination to become assistant administrator for enforcement. So why’s the ranking Democrat on the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee opposing her?
Because Carper complains that Scott Pruitt hasn’t responded to all of his letters.
“Certainly Ms. Bodine’s resume is helpful,” Carper admitted in a Wednesday statement before vowing to fight her nomination tooth and nail “until members of this committee receive adequate responses from Mr. Pruitt so that we can all exercise our oversight responsibilities.”
Normally, that’s a perfectly reasonable way for the Senate to exercise oversight of a stonewalling administrative agency. Except that’s not happening. According to EPA records shared with the Washington Examiner, the agency has received 20 letters from Carper, responded to 10 already, and just mailed another Friday.
The remaining letters are being investigated, said EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox, who added that seven of them were received in the past month alone. “We are working to respond as quickly as possible,” he said. “EPA staff is committed to being responsive to Congress.”
Carper did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s questions about the alleged postage problem. But a log of his letters sheds light on the correspondence between Pruitt and Carper.
Some of the letters request reasonable answers to reasonable questions. For instance, Carper wrote the EPA on May 2 to ask about National Ambient Air Quality Standards. Before that, he also wrote an April 7 letter seeking information about the Clean Power Plan.
Some of the notes seem over the top. Carper sent a May 1 letter asking Pruitt to explain and document why he stayed home from the GOP’s Oklahoma fundraising gala, which had been advertised as including him before he was nominated to the EPA. And an earlier April 18 letter asked Pruitt to respond to something Carper read in Politico about industry groups studying whether or not private lawyers could rewrite the Clean Water Rule.
A dutiful pen pal, Pruitt has responded to all these letters like the law requires. On the job for a little over three months, the EPA administrator has already shown a willingness to write back.
All of this makes it difficult to believe Carper’s excuse for blockading Trump’s nominee. It’s not that the senator has been waiting around his mailbox for letters that don’t come. It seems more that Carper has been spamming the EPA in a hasty effort to make a paper trail to excuse his obstruction.
Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
