Whitehouse Issues Epic Takedown Of EPA Admin. Zeldin’s ‘Idiotic And Dangerous’ Climate Change Claims

8 hours ago

During Friday’s Senate Finance Committee hearing, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) questioned Trump’s CMS Nominee, Dr. Oz, about EPA Administration Lee Zeldin's comments about climate change and the importance of insurance coverage.

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Transcript

00:00And next is Senator Whitehouse.

00:03Thank you very much, Chairman. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin recently made perhaps the most idiotic

00:10and dangerous statement ever made by an EPA administrator, saying that concern about climate

00:17change amounted to climate change religion. I believe every single one of the states of my

00:22Republican colleagues has a state university that actually doesn't just believe in climate science,

00:27but teaches climate science. And the idea that we're now at a place where that lie is being

00:35propagated from the top of the EPA is really appalling. Why do I raise that here? I raise

00:40that here because we are on the edge of an insurance crisis that has already manifest in

00:45Florida, where unpredictable climate risk makes insurance unavailable to homeowners, which makes

00:53mortgages unavailable to homeowners, which crashes property values, and according to the chief

01:00economist for Freddie Mac, cascades out into the economy in a 2008 style recession. And that, he

01:06said, just about the coastal risk. We now have wildfire risk as the evil sibling standing up.

01:13Until we have people who are willing to recognize this risk, then I'm going to be no votes on people

01:19who have responsibility here for our economy. What's particularly evil is that behind all this

01:26is a long and powerful and semi-covert scheme by the fossil fuel industry to exert improper

01:32political influence in Congress, spend dark money, and mislead the American public. Second,

01:38Elon Musk's muskrats are getting into data wherever they can. Good career people are being fired when

01:45they try to protect data systems. Data is money for the big tech bros who are backing Trump. This is

01:56very likely their payback to get access to Americans' private information. We've got to do

02:01a better job of defending the data systems from these muskrat envoys of the tech bro empire.

02:09And last, the Corporate Transparency Act, a law enforcement and national security measure

02:14supported by President Trump and his administration in the first Trump administration, has now been

02:21undone by Treasury. And I'd like to offer three documents and ask unanimous consent that they be

02:27put into the record. One is my statement for the record with respect to this. The other is a letter

02:33to Treasury Secretary Scott Besant, dated March 10th, about this matter. And the third is a cursory

02:39response that we got the following day from the Office of Legislative Affairs at Treasury.

Whitehouse Issues Epic Takedown Of EPA Admin. Zeldin’s ‘Idiotic And Dangerous’ Climate Change Claims

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