Comer, Fallon: EPA Must Cooperate with Congressional Oversight Moving Forward
WASHINGTON—House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) and Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy Policy, and Regulatory Affairs Chairman Pat Fallon (R-Texas) today sent a letter to U.S. Environmental Protection (EPA) Administrator Michael Regan reinforcing the Committee’s expectation that the EPA will quickly and thoroughly respond to all Committee requests. Given the EPA’s newfound cooperation with the Committee’s inquiries after previous months-long delays, the lawmakers announced that the Committee will postpone a scheduled hearing which was intended to examine the EPA’s failure to cooperate with Congressional oversight.
“Since February, the Committee has transmitted five separate request letters to EPA seeking documents, information, and communications we believe are vital to conducting oversight of your agency’s activities. Prior to sending our invitation for EPA to appear for the October 25, 2023, hearing, EPA flooded our offices with thousands of pages of nonresponsive documents, the overwhelming majority of which were publicly available or grossly outdated in some cases,” the lawmakers wrote.
The EPA has failed to adequately respond to the Committee’s oversight requests for information during the 118th Congress. After the Committee invited an EPA official to appear before the Oversight Committee with the purpose of providing testimony on the EPA’s failure to comply with Committee requests, the EPA finally began delivering the requested documents and communications.
“The Committee appreciates this sudden ‘show of good faith’ by EPA after months of failing to adequately respond to our requests. As such, we will honor EPA’s request to postpone this hearing with the expectation that the Committee will continue to receive substantive information from EPA responsive to our requests and that EPA will honor the recent commitments it has made. We look forward to receiving expeditious productions pursuant to each of our requests,” the lawmakers continued.
Read the letter to EPA Administrator Michael Regan here.