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Obama Amnesia & the EPA: For 8 years, Obama’s EPA refused to ban a toxic solvent — Now, Dems are blasting Pruitt for not banning it yet

By Julie Kelly

The Obama Amnesia afflicting our friends on the Left is particularly acute when it comes to the Environmental Protection Agency. It is as if lead-contamination oozed into our water supply; toxic chemicals that were deemed safe for eight years randomly started killing unsuspecting Americans; and algae blooms from agricultural run-off began popping up in the Great Lakes the very moment Donald Trump took the oath of office on January 20, 2017.

Notoriously profligate Democratic lawmakers who are now suffering from Obama Amnesia are suddenly distraught over allegedly inappropriate expenditures at the EPA. The use of tax dollars to boost the salaries of top staffers or to upgrade official vehicles now keeps these newly frugal stewards of public funds awake at night.

Obama Amnesia was on full display last week during two congressional hearings featuring EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. When the former Oklahoma attorney general took the helm of the EPA last year, he inherited a bloated, political, secretive, and unaccountable agency whose previous administrators’ misconduct was regularly overlooked by the media.

Nobody Cared About Gina McCarthy
Despite a number of scandals, there were no calls by theNew York Times editorial board for Obama EPA chief Gina McCarthy to resign, even after her agency caused the Gold King Mine spill (pictured above), an environmental catastrophe for which she refused to take responsibility.

When her agency was caught breaking the law for its illicit use of social media, or as Congress threatened to impeach her for perjury, no major newspaper demanded that McCarthy step down. While Obama’s EPA refused to ban allegedly dangerous chemicals such as methylene chloride or chlorpyrifos for years, the media and Democratic lawmakers refrained from accusing his administrators of poisoning children or killing people. After EPA employees were caughtdownloading porn, including child pornography, and McCarthy ignored or excused other egregious misconduct on her watch, it was crickets from our newfound EPA watchdogs in the elite media.

No such niceties have been extended to Pruitt, however. Quite the opposite, in fact. News reporters and editorial boards are partnering with environmental activists, the scientific establishment, and Democratic lawmakers to undertake a nonstop assault against Pruitt, from raising legitimate concerns about travel costs (although even these are completely  in line with those of his predecessors) to reporting on the inane, such as what type of house he owned in Oklahoma in 2004.

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