Scott Pruitt Quotes

When Congress writes a good law, then there are fewer lawsuits trying to interpret it.

The FCC should obviously not propose bad rules that will be struck down; it should propose good rules that will be upheld.

The government has the right to change laws and rules and regulations.

Our system of checks and balances makes it simpler to stop bills than enact them.

The process of getting regulations right is described publicly as far more political than in fact it is. It's essentially a legal and technical enterprise.

You know how in movies the new president comes in and promises to perform sweeping actions with a stroke of a pen? The Administrative Procedure Act is designed to thwart this sort of maneuver.

EPA's role is even broader than water infrastructure and cleaning up contaminated land - the agency also has a key role in allowing projects to move forward by reviewing environmental impact statements during the permitting process.

As a former EPA administrator under a Republican president, I recognize that it is easy to hate regulations in general. After all, regulatory action causes people to spend money or change behavior, often to solve problems they do not believe exist.

In order to build anything from factories to schools to hospitals, one must jump through a series of regulatory hoops, giving EPA veto power over any major projects.

Erasing the ALJ process, even if it takes legislation, will not deny anyone due individual process, generate added litigation risks or substantially increase workloads for commissioners or staff.

I hope the EPA will listen to the many votes over the years in Congress opposing cap-and-trade and rescind that proposed rule.

Every day, the hard-working men and women of Alabama's Department of Environmental Management are on the ground, protecting Alabama's rivers and lakes in a way that is beneficial to all. EPA should support them in that work, not make it more difficult.

We need an attorney general that's going to be an advocate for the state of Missouri and is willing to intervene in the regulatory process and go to court to protect Missourians from over-regulation.

However much we might sympathize or agree with EPA's policy objectives, EPA may act only within the boundaries of its statutory authority.

A court's assessment of an agency's compliance with statutory limits does not depend on whether the agency's policy is good or whether the agency's intentions are laudatory.

We in Congress don’t have much influence on the Supreme Court. We confirm judges and then we never hear from them. They don’t call. They don’t write.

I don’t think that Wall Street should write its own rules.

The legislative branch acts for the future. Judges act by reflecting on the past. The President has to deal with the realities of today.

[…] over the past decade, we’ve argued in court in favor of administrative latitude in decision-making. Now, by asserting the primacy of states rights, we’re flipping that argument on its head. How do we go back to all these cases where we’ve been arguing for executive discretion and say, “Oops, we didn’t mean it”?

Repealing rules therefore requires federal agencies to explain why the factual and scientific bases for the predicted benefits of their rules were wrong or no longer adequate to justify those rules.

The administrative state poses a grave threat to our values of personal liberty.

There is no question that the federal government sometimes overdoes it in issuing rules and regulations.

When I was mayor of Tulsa, Tulsa County was in nonattainment of the 1979 ozone NAAQS, so I have seen firsthand the economic impacts associated with the challenges of attainment and the legacy of EPA intervention that continues long after meeting the standard.

There is no reason why EPA's role should ebb and flow based on a particular administration or a particular administrator.

When you declare a 'war on coal' from a regulatory perspective, the question has to be asked: where's that in the statute? Where did Congress empower the EPA to declare a war on coal?