Congressman: Impeach EPA chief for ‘false science’

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy

Nearly two-dozen House Republicans are already on board an effort to impeach Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy for allegedly committing perjury and making false statements to Congress as part of her effort to push a controversial new rule on water.

Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., is a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. He said McCarthy broke the law multiple times before the committee while advocating for the Waters of the United States, or WOTUS, standard. The rule is lauded by environmentalists, but critics say it gives the feds power to regulate everything as small as a puddle.

“One of the responsibilities of Congress is the power of the purse, but there is also oversight,” Gosar told WND and Radio America. “In order to have proper oversight, you have to have agency administrators, directors and secretaries of those agencies speak frankly and about the facts.”

Despite the EPA’s controversial proposals on water, ozone and power-plant rules, Gosar said the impeachment is explicitly in response to McCarthy deliberately misleading Congress.

Known officially as House Resolution 417, the articles of impeachment drafted by Gosar specifically call three instances into question.

It alleges that McCarthy lied to the House Space, Science and Technology Committee when she said that the scientific rationale for proposing government regulation of any water found within 4,000 feet of navigable waters was included in materials provided to the committee.

“It is available in the docket … and that’s what we relied on, both the knowledge and expertise of our staff, the information that we received from the public and comments and the science that’s available to us,” testified McCarthy, who said her policy had the support of the Army Corps of Engineers.

However, Gosar and his allies point to an April 27 memo from Maj. Gen. John Peabody of the Army Corps of Engineers that describes the EPA wavering between a 4,000 and 5,000-foot boundary, and neither number being grounded in sound policy.

“EPA staff never provided any scientific support or justification for either a 5,000-foot or 4,000-foot cutoff,” said the Peabody memo.

In late July, McCarthy appeared before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, where she assured lawmakers that any differences with the Army Corps of Engineers about the rule had been cleared up.

“I individually had conversations with [Assistant Secretary of the Army Jo-Ellen Darcy] about the changes that the Army Corps was interested in making, and as the proposal moved through the interagency process I understood that everything had been fully satisfied,” testified McCarthy.

But document from the Army Corps of Engineers offered a much different version.

“In the Corps’ judgment, the documents contain numerous inappropriate assumptions with no connection to the data provided, misapplied data, analytical deficiencies, and logical inconsistencies. As a result, the Corps’ review could not find a justifiable basis in the analysis for many of the documents’ conclusions,” the Corps reported.

The final incident occurred in McCarthy’s testimony before a joint hearing of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, in which McCarthy insisted that WOTUS would not increase the amount of waters regulated by the government. Yet, the EPA’s own reports showed the rule would increase jurisdiction by 3.2 percent.

Gosar said that kind of deception must be addressed by Congress.

“The magic of the American experience is that we’ve upheld the rule of law for everybody, everybody treated equally beneath the law,” Gosar said. “If you’re not going to have consequences to a bad decision or to mislead Congress or any other aspect of life, that only incubates people to hatch bigger ideas that are not forthright and not abiding by the law.”

Listen to the WND/Radio America interview with Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz.:

Often times, public officials under oath will make corrections to the record if they give inaccurate testimony or do not have specific information available. Gosar said those sorts of corrections still have not happened.

“She said nothing,” said Gosar, who noted that his case is further strengthened by a federal judge hearing a water dispute case in North Dakota.

“The judge cited almost exclusively what we put forward in that application, which is that they have put forth false science and the fact there is no science that bases this,” he said.

In addition to having flimsy or nonexistent science to back up the proposed water rule, Gosar said McCarthy is directly violating the Supreme Court’s 2006 ruling on the Clean Water Act, which says bodies of water with no significant connection to other navigable waters do not fall under the Clean Water Act and cannot be regulated by the government.

Gosar said Congress has two options, but only one seems to make sense.

“We have the power of the purse. That’s been a hard and arduous way when we can’t even get the Senate to take up any type of budgetary process. So your second one is impeachment, or holding accountable. These are high crimes and misdemeanors, including lying under oath to Congress. The facts speak for themselves,” said Gosar, stressing this allegation is not a matter of opinion.

“It’s hardly my word versus hers. This is the Army Corps of Engineers versus her. She’s got problems,” he added.

Gosar said it’s now time for GOP leadership to move on this impeachment effort.

“It is time to go on the offense,” Gosar said. “Hold people accountable for the wrongdoings they do and commit against the American people, use the vestiges of the Constitution which gives us the outline of how we hold them accountable and make the Justice Department do their job. In this case, we make the Senate do their job.”

If the House were to approve the articles of impeachment, the Senate would be unlikely to find 60 votes to reach a final vote, much less the two-thirds majority to convict and remove.

Those facts lead some to conclude that pursuing McCarthy’s impeachment is a fool’s errand. Gosar vehemently disagrees.

“It is time for the cloture rule to go away,” Gosar said. “It is time for the modern-day filibuster to go away. If you want to put your body and soul and sit on the floor and give everything you’ve got until you’re done, that may be fine. There’s nothing in the Constitution that talks about the 60 (votes needed to cut off debate). These are modern rules.”

The congressman said America’s founders never meant for rules like this to gum up the works.

“Our framers only wanted the ability to debate their fellow man with facts in public arenas with freedom of speech and to use the power of persuasion to persuade why they’re right,” Gosar said. “We need to see the Senate stop hiding behind the 60-vote threshold and get back to how the rules of the Senate once were framed, and that is simple majorities.”

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