Quigley Speaks at AFGE Rally, Calls for Pruitt to Immediately Resign as EPA Administrator

WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Representatives Mike Quigley (IL-05), who serves as Vice Chair of the Sustainable Energy & Environment Coalition, spoke at AFGE's rally to demand that Scott Pruitt step down as EPA Administrator. Below are his remarks, as prepared for delivery.

There is no end to the areas in which those who are concerned with the well-being and vitality of our environment disagree with Scott Pruitt and this Administration.

From denying climate change and attempting to roll back President Obama's efforts to curtail emissions to politicizing science and scientific advisory boards, Pruitt and the Trump EPA have never missed an opportunity to sell out the mission of this agency to benefit their friends and corporate polluters.

It is unfathomable that an EPA Administrator would take the lead in convincing the President to remove the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, but that's exactly what Pruitt did—risking the lives and livelihoods of millions of Americans and billions around the world as we watch the impacts of climate change continue to spread.

But it's not just policy that brings us all here today. Remarkably, Scott Pruitt has managed to disqualify himself for his role in another way entirely—through a series of egregious and unacceptable ethical lapses that prove that he epitomizes the swamp that the President promised to drain.

In the last few weeks alone, Pruitt has been discovered to have wasted taxpayer money on unnecessary security and lavish first class flights; received impermissible benefits like cheap housing from an improper relationship with a lobbyist; given unwarranted and unacceptable raises to staff against the advice of the White House; and to top it off—he lied about all of it!

If any other federal employee had done half of what Scott Pruitt has done, they would have been fired weeks ago. Scott Pruitt is as corrupt as he is dishonest, and the dedicated and hardworking people at EPA deserve much, much better than him and is cronies atop this agency.

I call on Pruitt to resign immediately and if he won't, I call on the President to fire him now. Scott Pruitt's moral bankruptcy has taken too great a toll on the workforce at EPA and on the environment he is charged to protect. He must go.