The first-ever Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator reluctantly admitted the agency he headed under both the Nixon and Reagan administrations has gotten out of control in recent years.
“I almost hate to say yes, because it will skew what I’m about to say. But the answer is yes,” Bill Ruckelshaus, the first and fifth EPA administrator, told KNKX Thursday when asked if the agency had gotten “out of control and run amok.”
“When we started EPA we had 2,000 people, in 1970. We now have 15,000,” Ruckelshaus said.
Ruckelshaus said “the EPA was a victim of its own success,” KNKX reported, adding the former administrator “was called back in during the Reagan administration to fix it.”
Ruckelshaus is no EPA foe, however, and said the agency was a necessary check on state efforts to promote industry.
“States are not good regulators of industry because they compete so strongly for industry to locate within their borders,” Ruckelshaus said. “And because of that, EPA was formed.”
“People forget what the environment looked like 40 years ago, when we started all this stuff,” he said. “You look at the front page of the New York Times about once a month, where they put Beijing and see how those people are suffering. Well, the same thing was happening here.”
EPA critics today argue the agency has moved far beyond its original purpose and, instead, is hurting the economy. EPA finalized more than $344 billion worth of regulations during the Obama administration.
President Donald Trump promised to scale back EPA’s rule book, pushing to cut the agency’s budget 31 percent and reduce its workforce by 20 percent. Democrats and environmentalists oppose these cuts.
Ruckelshaus is most remembered for banning DDT, the chemical used to exterminate mosquitoes and fight malaria. He argued at the time DDT harmed birds and could cause cancer in humans — despite a lengthy public investigation that determined otherwise.
The 1972 decision to ban DDT, forced U.S. foreign aid agencies to convince to poor countries to stop using the disease-stopping substance.
EPA 2,000 employees to 15.000 and while continually running off other peoples jobs .
Yeah this has been coming for a long time but they are getting off light . Obama cut military jobs by over 30,000 alone let alone arming the EPA and running businesses
out of the country . The coal industry was a Clinton {OK mainly her hedge fund backer ) target that they straight up threatened to fire them .
No sympathy EPA you are on the dark side .
At a time of enormous threat growth to our national security Obama managed to significantly decrease both the size of our military and its overall budget. Meanwhile, bureaucratic agencies such as the EPA grew with unprecedented size and power, focused on the terrible “threat” of man-made global warming.
If Obama had only asked only to reduce the spending GROWTH to most bureaucratic social programs the media outcry would have been bloody and apocalyptic. The military takes the orders of the Commander in Chief and salutes. So much for other more “entitled and important” agencies.
Obama doubled the “official ” national debt to $ 20 Trillion from about $10 and cut the military by 20% . So where oh were did $10 Trillion vanish to ? $Billions to his pals in the UN is a drop in the bucket . Saving banks and car companies certainly took a big chunk but where did all that new debt go ?
If Obama’ admin can wiretap over 150 judges without a peep billions just vanishing
may be less of a trick .
Like Trump or hate him but he has to be given credit for shining a great big spotlight on the partisan and incompetent media . The global warming fraud pales in comparison to the current fabrication of political smoke . They don’t even know what questions to ask in their little 5 minute info twisters .
The swamp may eat Pres Trump but what comes after it is when the USA tanks .