EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced plans Wednesday night to claw back $20 billion in grants that are already in the bank accounts of eight nonprofits that were contracted to run the agency’s flagship climate law program.
Zeldin said in a video posted on X that the Biden administration’s decision to transfer the funds to Citibank — where they would be accessed by the nonprofits to administer two Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund programs — was an unprecedented attempt to shield the programs from government oversight. He argued that the money should have stayed at the Treasury Department.
“Shockingly, roughly $20 billion of your tax dollars were parked at an outside financial institution by the Biden EPA,” said Zeldin. “This scheme was the first of its kind in EPA history, and it was purposely designed to obligate all of the money in a rush job with reduced oversight.”
“The financial agent agreement with the bank needs to be instantly terminated, and the bank must immediately return all of the gold bars that the EPA tossed off the Titanic,” he said.
