Oklahoma's Scott Pruitt Confirmed to Lead EPA

Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt is exactly what the EPA needs.

In recent years, the agency has made a habit of ignoring the laws that establish and constrain its role, and Pruitt utilized his power as AG to keep it within its legal limits. He plainly understands the EPA’s role at least as well as its own prior leaders did, if not better.

Perhaps if the nation were struggling with unprecedented pollution and seeking to implement new laws in response, an EPA Administrator who specialized in pollution control technology would be more appropriate. But that is not the case. As the EPA proclaims proudly, air pollution has declined 70 percent in the past 45 years. What the nation struggles with today is costly and unlawful overreach by its federal environmental agency. Pruitt can help to fix that.

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Oren Cass is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here.