House Republicans renewed their efforts Wednesday to paint large parts of former President Joe Biden’s environmental agenda as wasteful or fraudulent.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee brought in representatives from watchdogs monitoring EPA and the Department of Energy. That gave the GOP a chance to push their objections to programs under the Inflation Reduction Act and bipartisan infrastructure law and to highlight concerns from the watchdogs.
But Democrats tried to use the hearing to denounce President Donald Trump’s early actions in office as detrimental to those programs and to the very oversight mission the Republicans want — including his actions to fire the inspectors general for EPA and DOE.
Indeed, the inspectors general who showed up Wednesday were working in an acting capacity, after the president dismissed them in January. They said dozens of people have left their offices since Trump’s inauguration.
