Wheeler Rejects Democrats' Attacks On EPA Rollbacks Amid Pandemic

摘要

EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler is defending the agency's enforcement discretion policy and deregulatory actions against Democrats' charges that the agency is exploiting the coronavirus crisis to continue environmental rollbacks with particularly damaging consequences during the pandemic. "No one is allowed to increase emissions under our enforcement discretion policy," Wheeler testified during a May 20 oversight hearing by the Senate Environment & Public Works (EPW) Committee, which was his first appearance before the Senate in more than a year. "And if they increase their emissions we will go after them.... We have been and will continue to." Wheeler's testimony -which focused not only on the controversial March 26 enforcement discretion but also a wide range of agency policies - provides an early test of the pandemic's effect on environmental debates already underway in an election year.