President-elect Donald Trump selected Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt to be his EPA administrator Wednesday. Since taking office in 2011, the 48-year-old Republican has found himself at odds with Washington, D.C., on issues ranging from Obamacare to overreach from the very agency he has been tasked to lead—a federal-state relationship he spoke about at length at the Manhattan Institute in December last year.
“We forget oftentimes what federalism equals. We think about it strictly as a legal concept, but it is something that impacts people in a very real fashion. We know about the horizontal checks and balances between the branches. What we forget about is the vertical separation of power between the federal and state government called federalism. The constitutional framework establishes that. But Congress has, as well in, many instances,” he said.
“Congress has spoken very specifically, very prescriptively, particularly in the environmental space with respect to state implementation plans and under the Clean Air Act, and you see this EPA, and you see regulatory bodies at the federal level displacing that, or duplicating state power.”
Pruitt filed suit against the EPA last year over its redefinition of the Waters of the United States, which critics, like Pruitt, have said would subject property owners to unpredictable and intrusive regulation and endanger private property rights. He spoke about the so-called WOTUS rule at about the 6:45 mark in the video below.
“There’s an ancient saying: You don’t recite poetry to one who’s not a poet. When you meet a swordsman, you draw the sword. And I will tell you with this federal government presently, with this administration, the sword is drawn quite often and the states need to respond in a reciprocal way,” Pruitt at the Manhattan Institute. “And we are, and multiple states are doing that in the immigration context, in the health care context, in the energy context, in the banking context with Dodd-Frank, and we’re seeing success.”
