There are issues the EPA should be dealing with. When I talk about the EPA and its role with the states, it's not an abolitionist view, that we don't need that agency. It's that the agency should act within the outlines established by Congress.
And I would begin with the EPA, because there is no other agency like the EPA. It should really be renamed the 'job-killing organization of America.'
The EPA historically has been an agency where people go to work at the agency and spend their entire career, 30, 40 years at the agency.
Even when EPA subjects its science to peer review, the agency often stacks the deck of supposedly independent advisory panels by including members who are EPA grant recipients.
Most lawsuits against the EPA historically have come either because of the agency's lack of regard for a statute or because the EPA failed in an obligation or deadline.
EPA's Affordable Clean Energy rule (ACE), would restore the states' proper role under the Clean Air Act and our system of federalism. Our plan would allow states to establish standards of performance that meet EPA emissions guidelines.
However much we might sympathize or agree with EPA's policy objectives, EPA may act only within the boundaries of its statutory authority.
EPA's role is even broader than water infrastructure and cleaning up contaminated land - the agency also has a key role in allowing projects to move forward by reviewing environmental impact statements during the permitting process.
The EPA is now the Employment Prevention Agency.
If the EPA cannot or will not act to halt the toxic e-waste trade to developing nations, then Congress should take action.
Here at the EPA, the agency will continue to do its best to promote the health and welfare of all Americans.
There is a reason to have an agency called the EPA, and it has served an historical purpose I believe is vital to this country.
Our battles against the EPA and other rogue federal agencies aren't about a desire for dirtier air or zero regulation. They are about our right as a state to control our own destiny and resist attempts by the administration to ramrod a wish list of regulations through agency heads instead of garnering approval from Congress.
I'm very concerned about the - I want to leave EPA in a better position than in which I found it, when I eventually do leave the agency.
Without question, I'm not a fan of the EPA. The EPA has overstepped their boundaries each and every day. They get into areas they shouldn't be involved in... the states have the right to regulate themselves if they have the ability to do so - and we do because we have the Department of Environmental Quality.
EPA gets to set a standard for new. For the existing, EPA sets guidelines for what we think is appropriate, but then states develop plans that work for them, taking into consideration their specific energy mix.
To reform the Secret Service, the agency needs a director from outside the agency who will be immune from that culture and not beholden to entrenched bureaucrats within the agency.