EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin sparred angrily Wednesday with a top Senate Democrat over the cancellation of hundreds of agency grants awarded during the Biden administration.
During the hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Zeldin and ranking member Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) descended into a shouting match over the mechanics of how those cancellations were decided.
“You guys are going to have to start getting your story straight,” Whitehouse said after citing sworn court filings that he said contradicted Zeldin’s claims that every canceled grant was first individually reviewed.
“I conducted an individual review of everything and that concept doesn’t work for you,” Zeldin said, his voice rising as the two men repeatedly talked over each other. “You don’t care about wasting money, but the Trump administration does, senator.”
After Whitehouse then asked him to back up that assertion by providing his schedule, Zeldin replied, “I’m here telling you that I was reviewing this stuff and working on it almost every single day”.
“The problem with your assertion here today is that it is belied by your own employees’ sworn statements in court,” Whitehouse countered.
The heated exchange ended soon after when Whitehouse’s time to speak expired, but it underscored the bitterness over the Trump administration’s efforts to take back billions of dollars in grants awarded by EPA and other agencies during former President Joe Biden’s tenure.
While Zeldin on Wednesday portrayed those decisions as an effort to safeguard taxpayer money, Democrats and other critics view them as part of a politically driven campaign to strip legitimate recipients of congressionally appropriated funds.
In a court filing in one lawsuit last month, a senior EPA official disclosed that the agency was ending 781 Biden-era grants awarded to reduce disparities in pollution exposure under the umbrella of environmental justice as well as to cut greenhouse gas emissions from the construction sector. That total was almost twice the number contained in an earlier EPA news release.
Wednesday’s hearing was the last — and by far the stormiest — of four appearances by Zeldin before House and Senate panels this month, ostensibly to discuss the Trump administration’s proposal to slash EPA’s core budget by more than half next year.
The grants controversy later prompted another shouting match between Zeldin and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.).
After Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) had earlier told Zeldin at length that his legacy would be more cancer, Zeldin replied, “I understand you were an aspiring fiction writer.”
When the hearing ended, EPW Chair Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) took the unusual step of asking spectators in the mostly full room to remain seated while Capitol Police escorted Zeldin and a small contingent of aides out through a back room.
