The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations spent nearly three hours Wednesday questioning former EPA administrators and others about what Congress can do to revitalize the agency, just before the Senate confirmed its newest leader, Michael Regan.

Although the hearing was framed as a kind of fact-finding mission, Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), E&C Committee chairman, made it clear that Democrats don’t intend to forget the impact the Trump administration had on the agency.

“We know that rebuilding EPA will not be an easy task after four years of the Trump administration,” he said at the outset of the virtual hearing. “They let polluters off the hook by weakening EPA’s enforcement program. They eroded the EPA’s essential scientific infrastructure. And they sidelined and silenced the agency’s talented and dedicated career staff, as scandals and investigations captured headlines on an almost daily basis.

“Thankfully, it is a new day at EPA.”

Christine Todd Whitman, EPA administrator from 2001 to 2003 under President George W. Bush, said she believes climate change is the most pressing problem facing the nation, and she had a lot to say about the national debate over it. But she said the agency has to be fixed first.

“The first order of business for the new leadership at the EPA is to re-establish a commitment to sound science as an integral and indispensable part of policymaking,” she said. “Coupled with a return to science is the restoration of the morale of the people at EPA. Over the years, the agency has been fortunate to be able to attract some of the finest scientific and policy talent available. Yet, a recent study showed that between 2016 and 2020, EPA lost 672 scientific experts. That is troubling.”

Whitman said the agency must retain the expertise it still has while “also attracting the best of the rising generation; those who will commit their careers to its mission. That’s the only way the agency can meet the many environmental challenges it faces.”

Carol Browner, EPA administrator from 1993 to 2001, during the Clinton administration, sounded a similar note about the agency under President Donald Trump.

“After four years of unprecedented, unrelenting attacks on the health and safety of communities across the country, policies that speed the destruction caused by climate change and efforts to hobble the agency, the EPA will need to be restored and recommit to its mission of protecting human health and the environment,” she said.

Regan Confirmed

Whitman said she was excited about President Biden’s choice of Regan to lead the agency. “He is a fantastic pick, and I hope that your colleagues on the other side of the Capitol will confirm him,” she said.

They indeed did later that day, swiftly voting 66-34 after confirming Biden’s picks for attorney general and secretary of housing and urban development, Merrick Garland and Marcia Fudge, respectively. Sixteen Republicans joined all 50 Democrats in the vote.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) both spoke briefly in opposition before the vote, though they clarified that their criticism was for the Biden administration’s policies and not Regan, whom they both praised personally.

Regan, who served four years as secretary of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, received bipartisan praise and was even introduced by his two home state Republican senators at his confirmation hearing in early February. (See EPA Nominee Regan Receives Bipartisan Support.)

“I too am excited about Michael Regan,” Browner said Wednesday. “Now is the time for EPA to act swiftly, as our country faces the accelerating and intertwined crises of climate change and environmental injustice, on top of the ongoing, compounding COVID-19 pandemic and the economic recession it caused.”

Whitman also spoke about environmental justice in her remarks.

“EPA should act with concrete and bold steps to pursue environmental justice and address the climate crisis, while also reaffirming the importance of following and advancing science for its decision-making process and strengthening the agency’s capacity,” she said. “EPA’s actions should be taken in consultation with environmental justice communities — Black, Brown, indigenous and other communities of color living on the front lines of pollution — using new opportunities for engagement and reflecting the diversity of the country.”

The agency “will need to be stronger and better resourced than ever before to deal with these crises and the fallout of Trump administration actions, and do it in a transparent and broadly inclusive approach,” she said.