(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) Fresh off mugging for the mainstream media with a piece of performative political theater in East Palestine, Ohio, and leaving its toxic train derailment in his wake, EPA Administrator Michael Regan was back in the D.C. Swamp this week looking to expand his army of bureaucrats.
Regan told the Senate Committee on Environmental and Public Works that the EPA needed a $375-million budget increase and 265 new full-time employees for his agency’s “environmental justice program.”
“The funding will help to expand support for community based organizations, indigenous organizations, tribes, states, local government and other territorial governments so that they can identify and develop solutions to their environmental justice concerns through multi-partner collaborations,” Regan spewed, channeling a Kamala-caliber word salad ramble.
The EPA’s Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights was spawned in September, when it landed $3 billion in so-called environmental justice grants as part of the Democrats’ $370-billion climate alarmist bill. The expansion was part and parcel of the Biden regime’s “aggressive approach to embed environmental justice, civil rights, and equity across the government,” according to the EPA.
“President Biden and I have been clear: we must ground our work to address the climate crisis and our greatest environmental challenges in justice and equity,” Vice President Kamala Harris said when the new branch was announced. “The establishment of a new office dedicated to advancing environmental justice and civil rights at EPA will ensure the lived experiences of underserved communities are central to our decision-making while supporting community-driven solutions.”
Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., was quick to pounce on a chance to cater to the climate alarmist cult crossmatched with race radicals, gushing over the EPA’s latest addition.
“It is apparently clear that any bold action we take to address the climate crisis must be rooted in environmental justice,” Jayapal said. “Too many of our marginalized communities have suffered environmental injustice for far too long.”
The $375-million bump for environmental justice and its army of enforcement agents conjoins Biden’s $12 billion for the EPA, a 19% increase, in his tax-and-spend budget proposal.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., said it was “mind-boggling” that the EPA couldn’t manage to scrape by with an infusion of nearly $41 billion from the climate bill.
“I think one of the issues here is the enormity of the dollars. The EPA received $41 billon and yet the president wants another 19% increase, 2,000 more people, when with the $41 billion — you’re allowed to hire people to move forward these programs,” Capito said.
“To me, it’s just mind-boggling that in this time of fiscal restraint, where people are really watching their dollars, this kind of overreach and overspending just seems so exorbitant to me.”
