Today, Explained - The $43,000 phone booth

Episode Date: April 17, 2018

Scott Pruitt, the embattled head of the Environmental Protection Agency, is facing a host of new scandals: a $43,000 soundproof phone booth, a security detail to Disneyland, and even using a siren on his car to get to a restaurant faster. But Vox’s Umair Irfan says that behind these controversies, Pruitt’s EPA has been one of the most consequential government agencies in the Trump administration. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Play the podcast Today Explained. Sorry, Josh. Something's gone wrong. Please try again. Hey, Siri. Play the podcast today explained. Okay, today. Explain podcast now playing. You might have heard that the head of the Environmental Protection Agency was having some housing issues here in the District of Columbia. His landlord actually went and changed the locks on him. Now, the head of the EPA has relocated to Scandal City, population Scott Pruitt.

Well, that's certainly dominating the airwaves. Umair Irfan writes about the environment for Vox. But behind the scandals, he's also racking up some wins for President Trump and his agenda. He's been very busy and very productive. Let's start with the scandals. There's a recent whistle blown that revealed a lot more what came out of that whistle. So this was by Pruitt's former deputy chief of staff, Kevin Shmielewski, who spoke to lawmakers and told them that, among other things, that Pruitt wanted to use lights and sirens in his

motorcade to get to dinner appointments. Which is not typical? Which is very not typical. In fact, the security detail head at the time objected, and then he was replaced with somebody who was okay with that. And he also, when he was planning trips, he wanted to go to places that he really wanted to go to for his own reasons. Anything stick out? Well, he mentioned specifically that they scheduled a meeting with an old friend of Pruitt's in Oklahoma, and they listed it as an official trip. But it was just like his homie? Yeah, it was just chilling with his friends.

Okay. He reassigned the staffers who complained about it. The folks that did say, you know, this is a little bit much, you might want to tone it down a little bit, keep this in check, and they lost their jobs. President Trump said he would drain the swamp. I don't— He's draining the swamp, renting an apartment from the wife of a Washington lobbyist. And you know, there's that condo scandal as well.

We found out that not only was he paying $50 a night, he didn't always pay it. And his landlord was complaining about that. Naturally. The landlord had some clients that he represents that had business before the EPA, including Enbridge, which had a pipeline that was approved by the EPA during the time at which Pruitt was staying there. It was like an Airbnb situation. When I was not there, the landlord, they had access to the entirety of the facility. When I was there, I only had access to a room. You could go on Craigslist today, and it's been done in the last week. But a cabinet secretary is going to go on Craigslist to rent an apartment. Craigslist today shows rentals for one bedroom of less than $1,000. I've never heard of an apartment like that. I've lived in Washington over 25 years.

Well. So what is there outside of Kevin Shmielewski's whistleblower report? What else we got? So Scott Pruitt has given himself a 24-hour security detail, which is completely unprecedented. For an EPA chief. For an EPA chief. Pruitt had this round-the-clock security detail that traveled with him just about everywhere. In a nutshell, an unnamed source suggests that Pruitt is using taxpayer-funded security during his non-business travel. So family trips to Disneyland, the Rose Bowl, and back home to Oklahoma. And how much do these kinds of trips cost, you know, Joe taxpayer?

They can cost a lot. I mean, estimates say that this 20% security detail can run up a bill of about $3 million a year. 20% for the head of the EPA. Yeah. You know, he's been seeing some pretty harsh tweets on Twitter and some nasty messages on Facebook. And so, you know, you really want to bolster your security when you're being threatened online like that. I heard he built a phone booth in his office. Is that true? Yes. This is a $43,000 soundproof phone booth in his office. And does he just go into the phone booth and use his smartphone or does he have a landline

in there? Do we know? We don't know because, well, he doesn't allow many staffers in there without an escort and many of them aren't even allowed to bring their own phones in there or even take notes. How is it okay to spend $43,000 on a phone booth? Well, the government accountability office told us yesterday that it isn't. They looked at the law and they said that the law states that an administrator can only spend up to $5,000 upgrading their office when they first come in, and they need to get special approval to spend anything more than that. So $43,000 is a little bit outside of

the $5,000 budget. Okay, so he should have picked up a cheaper phone booth. Or use the one that's already in the building because EPA actually has a secure,000 budget. Okay, so he should have picked up a cheaper phone booth. Or use the one that's already in the building because EPA actually has a secure facility already there. Are all of these scandals exceptional or is it sort of just par for the course for this administration or even administrations past where people get into these cushy departmental head jobs and start, you know, spending money?

Right. Within the administration, Pruitt is certainly not the most profligate spender when it comes to travel. You know, we saw Tom Price last year lose his job after spending a million dollars on air travel. Right. And Steve Mnuchin also spent a million dollars. But what stands out here is the secrecy and the paranoia. So what's been the response to all of these scandals? Well, it really depends on who you ask. Some Republicans have been running interference for Pruitt and they say that he's been doing a good job at the agency and he's been delivering wins for President Trump. But others are getting a little bit frustrated with dealing with him. Three House

Republicans have openly called on him to resign. And the House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, he wrote a letter saying that they haven't turned over all the documents that they've requested. And he's criticized Scott Pruitt's first class travel habits. Look, if you sit first class, you're guaranteed to come in contact with everybody else on the plane. If you really want to avoid people on the plane, sit in the last seat, not the first seat. I'd be shocked if that many people knew who Scott Pruitt was. So the notion that I've got to fly first class because I don't want people to be mean to me, you need to go into another line of work if you don't want people to be mean to you.

If I were to put myself in Scott Pruitt's shoes for a second, I feel like maybe one reason it's worth risking all these scandals is because he genuinely feels like people out there might be after him, might hate him for all the things he said about the EPA before he was in charge of the EPA. And he hasn't been a fan for a long time. I mean, his LinkedIn page still shows that, you know, he's one of the leading activists against the EPA's agenda. Sorry, hold on a second. The head of the EPA's LinkedIn page currently says that he is the leading advocate against the EPA's activist agenda. That's correct. Why is he on LinkedIn? Does he need a LinkedIn? He's the head of the EPA. I mean, given how long staff members have lasted in this administration, I mean, you really want to keep your resume polished. Oh my gosh. Okay. Mayor, there's just so much here. It's very scandal. Feels like maybe,

I don't know, a musical number is in order here. How insensitive do you think it would be to sing a song about Scott Pruitt to the tune of, say, I don't know, Beat It? I don't think that would be insensitive. In fact, I think he might even get a kick out of it. We're not trying to make any government official happy here. We're hard-hitting journalists. Right. He says his rental's like a Nubian bee

He's staying in the heart of Washington, D.C. Directing the Environment Protection Agency. He's Pruitt, Scott Pruitt. He's got a super-secret silent phone booth. He's got security to watch his every move. They hit the Rose Bowl, went to Disneyland, too. He's Pruitt, and he's still on LinkedIn. He's Pruitt, Pruitt, Pru He's Brew It, Brew It, Brew It, Brew It.

Everyone can see him do it. We've got fuel standards, dirtier air. It doesn't matter, cost of airfare. He's Brew It, Brew It, Brew It, Brew It, Brew It, Brew It, Brew It, Brew It, Brew It. I guess we should talk about what he's doing as the leading advocate against the EPA slash head of the EPA. Well, the thing to remember is that the Environmental Protection Agency as a federal agency, a lot of its work is dictated by Congress. A lot of it's established by law. So there isn't a whole lot that the administrator can do on some of the big pieces of legislation on their own. He can't wave a magic wand and say, the Clean Air Act is done. We're not doing this anymore.

Right. So there are three big things Scott Pruitt can do at the EPA. Number one is change the long-term planning of the agency. Number two is being very lax and lenient on enforcing the existing rules. And number three is to staff the agency with people from industry and the industries that the EPA regulates. Okay, long-term planning lacks enforcement and staffing. Let's start up top with long-term planning. What's he doing there? A lot of the legislation that the EPA enforces has provisions in them that require them to be revised every so often.

Are the current rules working? Could they be better? So what he can do is basically say that I want more time. And that's what he's been doing with, say, the Clean Water Act and the air. Last week, there was a rollback of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards via an executive order that just kind of flew under the radar, setting a new standard that would allow industry to weigh in a little bit more aggressively, and then also limiting the kinds of science that are being used to enforce those rules. So he's changing up long-term planning with air and water, but what about the main events? What about fuel standards? The Obama administration, right before it left office, put out a sort of midterm evaluation of these new fuel economy standards that were supposed to go into place by 2025.

Essentially, they were supposed to go back and verify and make sure that everything's on track and that the auto companies can actually hit this target. Pruitt said that they did a rush job on that evaluation. Did they do a rush job on that evaluation? Well, it depends on who you ask. The Obama EPA said that we spent years looking at this rule. We looked at a lot of studies and the technology shows that, you know, you can make fuel efficient cars that people want to buy and these standards are appropriate. Is there a chance that if you're really hung up on fuel standards that you don't have to worry so much because California, for example, has far stricter fuel standards. So if auto manufacturers want to sell cars in California, which they obviously do. They're going to have to modernize anyway. That's a great question because the state of California has a waiver to the Clean Air Act that allows them to set stricter standards.

And because their standards are actually a little bit more strict and they're one of the largest vehicle markets in the country, they de facto set the standard for the rest of the country. Right. Scott Pruitt now says he wants to challenge that. Really? Yeah. He's been a big fan of states' rights, but not California's. Let California do California, Scott. Yeah. Well, he said that he doesn't think it's fair for one state to set the benchmark for the

rest of the country. And so now there's going to be a big lawsuit between the California Air Resources Board and the EPA if they try to revoke this waiver. And if they don't, what that means is that California is going to have stricter standards than the rest of the country. And that means auto manufacturers would have to basically calibrate their models to different states under different rules, or they would still have to be held to the strictest possible rule, in which case this rollback doesn't really mean all that much to them. Okay, so getting back to these three big things you say Pruitt's doing.

Yeah. Long-term planning, enforcement, and staffing. Right. Okay, so tell me more about enforcement, like this sort of laxification. One of the big things that the EPA does on a day-to-day basis is go after polluters, find the guys that are actually violating the law, and sticks them with fines and sometimes court orders to clean up their act. Okay.

And we've seen a drop-off on that. And, you know, when you don't enforce the law, sometimes you see people break it more and more often. I mean, imagine, you know, a street where you don't enforce parking regulations. I mean, you may like not getting parking tickets, but eventually you're never going to be able to find a parking spot. So how does this play out in stuff like the Clean Water Act, let's say? Very likely we'll see manufacturers or pollution sources

dumping more into these waterways, into the air, into the soil. Former EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman, who was the administrator under George W. Bush, I mean, she told me that people will get sick and die. That's an inevitable consequence of, you know, not enforcing these pollution restrictions. And we have seen that already, right? Is this just sort of us forgetting our own history

with Deepwater Horizon or Flint, Michigan or anything like that? Yeah, in a sense, I mean, the EPA has been kind of a victim of its own success. When it was first created in the 1970s, I mean, we were talking about massive pollution problems in the country. Rivers were catching on fire. The air in Los Angeles was brown. This was Nixon's idea, we should remind people. Yes, this was a conservative Republican administration that thought that it was a good idea for the federal government

to step in and regulate pollution when the states failed to do so. Each of us all across this great land has a stake in maintaining and improving environmental quality, clean air and clean water, the wise use of our land, the protection of wildlife and natural beauty, parks for all to enjoy. These are part of the birthright of every American. To guarantee that birthright, we must act and act decisively. It is literally now or never. They've done a pretty good job. I mean, the air has gotten better. Once that problem gets out of sight, though, I mean, it's often out of mind. And is that where this third thing comes into play after long-term planning and enforcement? Is this where we can see sort of the impact of staffing?

Exactly. The folks that you're picking on your team are the ones that are going to be setting the agenda for the next decade as far as what you're going to be going after in terms of pollution sources. These rules take years to put together. I mean, the Clean Air Act took a lot of research and science, and it's been amended over decades. Yeah. And if you stall for time or if you pick people that really aren't that vested in the science or the folks that are very skeptical of the science that are going in, you slow that process down drastically, which means that the problems we're facing now are likely to linger longer. The way President Obama passed a lot of environmental regulation wasn't necessarily through Congress. It was by just signing in these executive orders, right? Yeah. So is Pruitt sort of in an effective though opposite way following Obama's playbook in a way

to just like pull back everything that Obama did without passing legislation? Yeah, exactly. That's kind of what he's doing. Like President Obama didn't finish a lot of those rules and that's where he had the wiggle room to go back in and say, wait a minute, we have to go back and look at it again. That's where he buys himself time for years to essentially not enforce these new rules. This thing where you take someone

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find out in the break here. Beyond someone who wants a 20-person security detail and fancies Disneyland and football, who is Scott Pruitt? Well, Scott Pruitt is an Oklahoman via Kentucky who loves baseball and hates the EPA. While he was the Attorney General of Oklahoma, he sued the agency 14 times. He also served in the Oklahoma legislature where he was a bit of a culture warrior. He was somebody who argued hard for conservative principles. He was somebody who argued for intelligent design to be taught in schools alongside evolution and things like that. Nice.

In an administration that has struggled to get its agenda passed, the EPA is one of the few bright spots for President Trump. He can tell his base that, you know, I got us out of the Paris climate change agreement and we're rolling back greenhouse gas standards and we're lifting regulations on industry. All these things that he can point to come from, you know, Scott Pruitt and what he's been able to accomplish at the EPA. And he's very much been ambitious in that regard as well, politically. He's been trying to climb up to higher and higher offices. And this is pretty much a rung in that ladder. That's probably why his LinkedIn account is still active. Yeah, there have been some rumors that he's been fishing for Jeff Sessions' job.

And they're also possibly the governor of Oklahoma. How does Pruitt compare to like a Rick Perry type who also came in being like, you know, Department of Energy, I got no use for the Department of Oklahoma. How does Pruitt compare to like a Rick Perry type who also came in being like, you know, Department of Energy, I got no use for the Department of Energy, and then settled into the Department of Energy, been a lot quieter than Scott Pruitt. Rick Perry famously, if you remember the 2012 debate, he named three government departments that he wanted to dissolve and couldn't remember the Department of Energy. It's three agencies of government when I get there that are gone. Commerce, education, and the third agency of government, I would do away with the education, the commerce, and let's see.

I can't. The third one, I can't. Sorry. Oops. Classic Perry. I was at his confirmation hearing, and, you know, he did answer for that and said that, you know, I was mistaken about the Department of Energy. And since he took office, he's been repeatedly saying, like in his stump speech, that this is the coolest job I've ever had. Compared to Scott Pruitt, who is still, you know, operating as if he's in hostile territory. He has not quite warmed up to the agency. And I don't think the staffers there, the career staffers at least, have warmed up to him. At least 700 employees have left the EPA since he took office. And the kinds of people that are fishing for career jobs

at the EPA are also declining. And Pruitt has actually been lobbying for budget cuts to his own agency as well. And he's been actively seeking to reduce its headcount. If Scott Pruitt, who seems to have designs on a higher office, is relatively successful and the work he's doing is pleasing the president, what do you think that means for what we can sort of expect from him? Well, as far as from Pruitt, I mean, he's getting positive enforcement. I mean, like when he constantly, you know, plays the rhetorical cards of, you know, being against big government and that the EPA has been weaponized and now I'm dialing it back. You know, these are wins for the agency. They're wins for his

personal brand. And so as long as you deliver wins for your base and also alienate your adversaries politically, you're going to be in good shape for running in this politically divisive climate. Wherever you stand on the political spectrum, left, right, in the middle of somewhere, what does it mean that our government basically functions this way now? That it's sort of more like about the personalities in place at the top and not about who we're electing to actually legislate for us. It's pretty grim for transparency. When we're allowing these executive cabinet agency heads to be more vocal and develop their own personal profiles, I mean, it gives them sort of the shielding they need to build up a personal brand in an increasingly tribal political environment. It's all about racking up the wins in rhetoric, if not in actual action. We can just assume that this is how it's going to continue because things don't seem to be getting better.

I mean, even with a majority in the Congress and the Senate and having the presidency. Yeah, I mean, this is very likely going to be the model going forward until we see a big political change. The other front we might see is also states pushing back against the EPA. Some states are already using Pruitt's playbook that he used against the EPA as Attorney General against him now. So you've got states like California, like Massachusetts and Connecticut,

that are also suing the EPA now for not enforcing the law. It'll be interesting to see how Pruitt feels now that he's on the other side of these lawsuits. It sounds like he may no longer be the leading advocate against the EPA's activist agenda. No, and it seems like there are a few other attorneys general that are ready to challenge the EPA under Scott Pruitt now. Omer Irfan writes about the environment for Vox. I'm Sean Ramos from This Is Today Explained. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Noam Hassenfeld is our singer. Luke Vanderplug is our producer. Bridget McCarthy is our editor. Afim Shapiro is our engineer. And the immaculate And you can find us on Twitter at today underscore explain. So, Sarah, we're back. I don't think Mattress Firm has crib mattresses.

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