As discussed on the call this morning, please see attached and below CAC message guidance calling for Wheeler to suspend and review Pruitt's rollbacks while we wait for the 18 federal investigations to conclude. Let us know if you have any questions. 

CAC MESSAGE GUIDANCE: Pruitt’s Toxic Agenda Can’t Move Forward

With EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt resigning in disgrace, his replacement Andrew Wheeler should suspend and review Pruitt’s roll backs of clean air, climate change, and clean water protections and vacate any policies that cannot be supported by science.

• Due to Pruitt’s deep seeded corruption and his too-cozy relationship with the industries he oversees, every policy decision he made that undermined public health and the environment should be immediately halted, reviewed, and vacated if it can’t be supported by science.

• What has become clear through the multiple scandals that brought him down is that Pruitt didn’t take actions to protect our health and environment and was deeply influenced by special interests. His actions were made on behalf and at the behest of industry, not the American people.

• Acting Administrator Wheeler, a former coal industry lobbyist with his own entanglements with big polluters, should suspend and review Pruitt’s policy actions until the 18 federal investigations into Pruitt’s conduct are concluded and the depth of the culture of corruption in the EPA administrator’s office is fully understood.

About Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler

Andrew Wheeler is a former coal industry lobbyist who will advance a big polluter agenda that rejects science, endangers health and undermines clean energy. As Pruitt’s understudy and as an industry insider, Wheeler will step right in and continue the corporate cronyism that was the hallmark of Pruitt’s tenure at EPA. Wheeler is just as bad, if not worse, as Pruitt for our health and environment.

• Andrew Wheeler means more of the same at EPA, it’s just out with the guy who was paid by the lobbyists, in with the guy who was paid as a lobbyist.

• Andrew Wheeler comes straight from the D.C. swamp – he’s a Washington coal lobbyist who represented one of the biggest polluters in the country, Murray Energy.  As deputy administrator, Wheeler was complicit in Pruitt’s anti-health and environment agenda and will feel very comfortable in the culture of corporate cronyism fostered by Pruitt.
• With Wheeler in charge, polluters and their lobbyists are in charge. The days of clean air, water and land are numbered and the health and safety of our children, seniors and families will not be a concern for a Wheeler-led EPA. 

• Wheeler would lead an EPA inner circle established by Pruitt that’s jam-packed with industry lobbyists and corporate executives. His staff meetings will be a who’s who of polluting industry lobbyists now on the government payroll.
• Wheeler’s record and close association to polluting industries give no indication that he would be any different from Pruitt – and would continue the big polluter agenda that puts our health at risk.   
• It’s doubtful Wheeler would behave any different from Pruitt when it comes to accepting settled science and addressing climate change.
• Too much damage was done to our health and environment under Pruitt’s reign – it’s the responsibility of Congress to make sure the American people aren’t saddled with yet another EPA chief who puts polluters ahead of the mission of the agency.
• If Andrew Wheeler is the new courier for Donald Trump’s dirty energy agenda, once again big polluters win while everyone else loses. Increasing pollution and endangering our families does nothing to make America great.