Chair Carter Opening Statement at Hearing to Hold the Radical Biden-Harris EPA Accountable

statement I'm pleased to welcome our sole witness today the Inspector General of the Environmental Protection Agency Shan odonnell Mr odonnell has held the position of Inspector General since early 2020 and is here to testify before this subcommittee on the spending and activities of the agency especially those connected to the infrastructure investment and jobs act or ija and the misnamed inflation reduction act or IRA for contexts the Environmental Protection agency's entire nonja non Ira annual budget for fiscal year 2024 is 10136 billion this amount reflects an increase of 10.4% over epa's fiscal year 2021 funding level of 9.08 five billion the iig alone provided EPA 60 billion do over five fiscal years are $12 million in annual Appropriations to EPA Not only was it the single largest appropriation ever provided to EPA but it also more than doubled annual spending at the agency during the Biden Harris Administration the IRA later came along and gave EPA another 41.5 billion doll in new and expanded programs at EPA that's two bills an additional 101.5 billion dollar and roughly 10 times the amount of money normally dropped off at EPA top spend this is a massive infusion of funding and outrageous level of spending and pressure on our national debt particularly from many of my Republican colleagues who represent almost two-thirds of congressional districts in in America where the average median income is below the national average and whose children will be asked to pay for this spending regardless of if you voted for these bills though I hope you will agree with me that it is imperative that Congress conducts robust oversight of all this money given to EPA and the other agencies it is the right thing to do that said I realize that there may be some limits on how much information the Inspector General has for us today and may be able to get for us in the future Congress clearly directed his office to oversee ija funding and gave his office $53 million a year to do it unfortunately Ira provided the IG no requirements to police that spending and Congress has approved no fun to do it regardless fulfilling these directives or lack thereof are dependent upon the willingness of EPA to allow real oversight to occur the committee has had uneven results in its own investigating of these programs sometimes we have had success sometimes we have met resistance and usually we've been made to wait a long time to find out which it is when administrator rean rean testified earlier this year he assured us that he talks with the IG all the time when we ask him if he was fully cooperating on the oversight I look forward to finding out if the inspector General's experience has been different than the committee's if his experience is less than satisfactory I would like to know what legal constraints he faces and what he needs from EPA to be successful I also think it is important to find out if EPA implemented any lessons that it should have learned from its spending experiences with the American Recovery and reinvestment act and if EPA made any changes based on this experience what difference if any they made we should know more about how much of the allocated Ira funding has already been spent what type of quality control EPA and its and its grantees are placing on this on the dispersement and use of this funding including by thirdparty vendors on the use of the money and what objective measures are being used to measure the results finally I hope we are able to explore some of epa's interactions with the states which also have a significant burden with these funds this is especially important in the light of the aggressive regulatory Push by this Administration and its non-governmental ideological allies I look forward to an insightful discussion with our witness and I yield back the rest of my time