A former top official of President Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency is returning to the EPA as chief of staff with a vengeance on Monday, vowing to use the post to promote the president’s deregulatory agenda aggressively ahead of the 2020 election while pushing back against Democrats’ “socialist-aligned policies.”
Mandy Gunasekara is waving off Democratic critics who question whether she will politicize a typically low-key job working as the right-hand woman of administrator Andrew Wheeler. She comes back to the EPA after spending the past year running a nonprofit organization called Energy 45 out of her home state of Mississippi to promote Trump’s fossil fuel-first energy agenda and counter the principles of the liberal “Green New Deal.”
“With bad ideas coming from Congress, I will always be honest with how I characterize those not only within the agency but to the general public,” Gunasekara, 35, told the Washington Examiner.
“If Democrats don’t want to be called socialist, I would suggest they stop putting out socialist-aligned policies,” she said.
Gunasekara was responding to criticism from Sen. Tom Carper, the top Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee, and others who raised concerns at a hearing last week about her impartiality and ethics. Energy 45 does not disclose its donors.
Carper, a Vietnam veteran, highlighted a tweet Gunasekara wrote in February 2019 comparing the “looney left’s” policies to a “Soviet-takeover of our energy and economy,” calling them “reprehensible.”
Gunasekara does not regret the tweet.
“Having seen the perils of communism firsthand, I hope we can find common ground in working against the socialist-aligned policies that some of his Democrat colleagues are unfortunately embracing,” Gunasekara said of Carper, referring to his service in Vietnam.
The “Green New Deal,” as proposed by some liberal Democrats, is a broad vision to combat climate change that seeks net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in the United States and would reshape the economy through a federal jobs guarantee and universal healthcare.
A Carper spokesperson told the Washington Examiner that Gunasekara’s response “does not reflect an earnest or effective attempt at bridging deep divides between the administration and Congress, which is unfortunate.”
Gunasekara, a lawyer by training, proved effective in her first EPA stint at pushing through policies to support Trump’s agenda, some of which she will have a role in finalizing in hopes they survive court challenges.
Working as the EPA’s top adviser on air policy, Gunasekara described herself as the “chief architect” of Trump’s move to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, as well as a key official involved in the agency’s repeal and eventual replacement of the Obama-era Clean Power Plan and fuel efficiency standards.
Before leading the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation on an acting basis under then-administrator Scott Pruitt, Gunasekara worked for Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe as majority counsel for the Environment and Public Works Committee.
She sat directly behind Inhofe, a skeptic of climate change science, during his infamous 2015 speech on the Senate floor in which he brandished a snowball as evidence that the world is not warming.
The Trump EPA’s ties to Inhofe run deep. Gunasekara said she was recruited to return to the EPA by Wheeler, a former Environment and Public Works staff director under Inhofe, and Ryan Jackson, the most recent EPA chief of staff who Gunasekara is replacing. Jackson was also previously a staff director of EPW under Inhofe, and he hired Gunasekara at the committee.
Jackson left the EPA in January to join the National Mining Association after fighting the EPA’s acting inspector general, who accused the chief of staff of stonewalling two audits.
Gunasekara downplayed Jackson’s tussle with the inspector general, saying the scrutiny “was somewhat misplaced.”
Gunasekara said she hopes to help the administration promote its environmental record, which has focused on traditional items such as cleaning up toxic waste sites and combating lead in drinking water rather than on climate change.
“Republicans have not always been good at telling that story,” she said.
Gunasekara also plans to make the case for some of the administration’s main deregulatory initiatives, including its replacement of the Clean Power Plan regulating emissions from coal plants, which is tied up in court and may not be decided on before the presidential election.
She said the EPA’s decision to propose its Affordable Clean Energy, or ACE, rule shows its commitment to combating climate change despite analysis that shows it won’t have a significant effect.
The Energy Information Administration released an analysis this month that found the rule would slightly reduce carbon emissions but that it would also keep more coal power plants online than there otherwise would be with no rules in place.
“This administration has been very thoughtful on its approach to climate change from the beginning,” Gunasekara said. “The ACE rule is the first ever legally viable greenhouse gas standard for coal plants. I don’t think we get the credit for that.”
Gunasekara was alluding to the fact the Clean Power Plan was never implemented because of a Supreme Court stay.
She aligned her views on climate change more broadly with her new boss, Wheeler, who says it’s a problem but not a significant one — and one that the EPA has limited authority to counter.
“The climate is changing, humans have a role, and it’s something that scientists continue to seek out to better understand,” Gunasekara said. “I don’t think it is catastrophic, but it’s very important and one we will continue to address through pragmatism.”
Gunasekara also defended other controversial EPA regulatory moves, including the agency’s plan to soon finalize weakening Obama-era regulations meant to reduce the amount of air pollution emitted by coal power plants.
Some Republicans and utilities have warned against the Trump EPA revisiting the Mercury and Air Toxics Standard, arguing that doing so would harm public health and undercut power companies that already complied with the regulations.
The Trump EPA is trying to reverse the cost-benefit analysis used to justify the regulation in a way that critics say could hamstring future administrations from limiting power plant pollution.
“If we don’t do the accounting in a way that balances real costs with real benefits, you would be in a position where future administrations can regulate for the sake of regulating,” Gunasekara said.
The Trump EPA has acted against the interest of the business community in other ways, including by proposing to eliminate the direct federal regulation of methane emissions from oil and gas operations despite the protests of companies such as BP and Exxon.
And it divided the auto industry by going after California, moving to eliminate the state’s ability to set its own fuel efficiency rules at stricter levels than federal levels.
Gunasekara said the administration’s willingness to buck businesses demonstrates its commitment to fulling Trump’s promises.
“The business industry is not the only voice we listen to,” Gunasekara said. “I will bring energy to continue to help the president fulfill promises to people in Mississippi, Alabama, and other areas previous administrations have ignored.”
