At a Senate Environment Committee hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) spoke about remarks from EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin.
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NewsTranscript
00:00I will now turn to Ranking Member Whitehouse for his statement.
00:03Thank you, Madam Chair, and welcome, Secretary Duffy.
00:07It's good to have you here.
00:09A strong bipartisan commitment to infrastructure got us the historic Infrastructure Investment
00:15and Jobs Act.
00:17Last week, I attended the unveiling of the American Society of Civil Engineers 2025 Infrastructure
00:22Report Card.
00:24We are not A students yet, but the report card shows progress.
00:28Thanks to both the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Inflation Reduction Act, which
00:33are delivering real results across the country.
00:36At the start of the Biden administration, our infrastructure was crumbling from decades
00:39of neglect.
00:4146,000 bridges were in poor condition.
00:44More than 170,000 miles of major roads were in poor condition.
00:49We had unreliable and insufficient transit systems.
00:52The bipartisan infrastructure law began turning this around with long overdue investments
00:56in roads, bridges, transit, ports, drinking water, wastewater, and other systems that
01:02are the backbone of our nation's economy.
01:05We see this progress in Rhode Island's bridges.
01:08We've gone from 27 percent structurally deficient in 2016 to 12 percent in 2025.
01:15Like I said, not A students, but progress.
01:19And the bipartisan infrastructure law brought nearly 100 projects closer to completion in
01:23Rhode Island alone.
01:25As we think about the future of transportation and other infrastructure projects, it's incumbent
01:29on us to address a big obstacle, unreasonable delays.
01:36China builds high-speed rail, airports, and ports at warp speed while we tread water.
01:41Even France, long lampooned for embodying bureaucracy, builds subway and rail projects
01:46faster and at less cost than we do.
01:50Delays take many forms.
01:51There's permitting, and I'm thrilled to work with Chairman Capito on permitting reform.
01:57There's bureaucracy, and as I've mentioned many times before, we have to manage this
02:05interagency process monster better.
02:09To be clear, I and many of my colleagues rode the Biden administration hard about delays
02:15of infrastructure and other projects.
02:17This is actually very often a legislative versus executive separation of powers issue
02:24in which the executive branch hides behind interagency process all sorts of delay, irresponsibility,
02:31non-accountability, and bad execution.
02:34We should take our oversight responsibility seriously no matter who is in the White House.
02:40The most recent spate of delays affecting infrastructure projects is the Trump freeze
02:45of infra, mega, bridge investment, and protect funding.
02:50Thousands of projects are backed up so they can be screened for DEI or other mega heresies
02:57by rattled and shrunken agencies.
03:03I want to start by thanking Chair Capito and her staff for helping unstick previously awarded
03:07funding for Rhode Island's essential Washington Bridge.
03:10Madam Chair, thank you.
03:12Secretary Duffy, I also want to thank you for your team's work delivering the funding
03:15for a number of discretionary grants in the past week, including those Washington Bridge
03:21funds.
03:22It's a crucial project, as you know, not just for Rhode Island, but for the region.
03:25It's where you turn to head out towards the Cape.
03:28It's a key hub.
03:29I hope that we can rapidly deliver previously awarded funding for the array of I-95 bridges
03:36that need the work and for the Mount Hope Bridge, which I want to show, because setting
03:42aside how important it is as a piece of transit infrastructure, it's also gorgeous.
03:47I mean, it's one of the most beautiful bridges in the country.
03:51It's 100 years old.
03:52We can extend its life.
03:54We need to get this done.
03:56As I said in our call, Secretary, and as the Chair knows, I'm eager to work on bipartisan
04:01permitting reform, and the scoping conversation with our colleagues at the Energy Committee
04:05has already begun.
04:08I'm eager to do a robust bipartisan water resources bill and a robust bipartisan highway
04:14reauthorization.
04:15These three bills could be big, and they could be transformational, but I can't do any of
04:22that while the Trump administration blockades authorized and appropriated funds for approved
04:28projects, particularly if it blockades selectively.
04:34But I can't do that if the Trump administration violates its duty to see that bipartisan laws
04:39we pass are executed faithfully, faithfully, not with favoritism.
04:46So Mr. Secretary, the door is open in this committee to big bipartisan things for our
04:52infrastructure, and I encourage you to walk through that open door.
04:59If I may just revert to one other topic for a moment, I addressed last week the mischief
05:05and the nonsense that has surrounded the Green Infrastructure Fund, and we've seen Senator
05:15Sullivan's a former Attorney General, I'm a former Attorney General, I'm a former U.S.
05:19Attorney.
05:20When you're firing career staff who disagree with you, when you're proceeding with only
05:23political signatures without any career staff who will sign, when you're getting shot down
05:27in one court and told there's no evidence for what you're saying in another court, and
05:31you're still sending FBI agents around to harass employees, and particularly when you're
05:36making derogatory accusations of fraud and criminality, which Administrator Zeldin has
05:42done, first, it's a violation of DOJ process, second, as a matter of law, it's defamatory
05:49per se, and it appears from the rejection by the career staff, the rejection by the
05:55magistrate judge, and the finding of no evidence by the federal judge, that this was a knowingly
06:02defamatory set of statements made by the EPA Administrator and that acting U.S. Attorney.
06:07We're going to continue to drill down into that piece of misconduct, and I will simply
06:11ask for the moment that the article today, EPA Hunt for Shady Deals and Gold Bars Comes
06:17Up Empty, be made a matter of record for this hearing.
06:22Thank you very much for that.