Today, the Government Accountability Office found that the Environmental Protection Agency violated federal law when it set sail on a social media campaign to drum up support for its ridiculous law, the Waters of the United States. The law claims to better protect United States’ water; however, when elected officials read the fine print, they learned that the EPA had plans to control virtually every body of water in the country. It was a massive overreach. Hence, the need to rally public support for the law. Unfortunately, lobbying and propagandizing by federal agencies is verboten under federal law.
Whoops.
Here’s what Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works committee, told the New York Times about the ruling:
“GAO’s finding confirms what I have long suspected, that EPA will go to extreme lengths and even violate the law to promote its environmental agenda. EPA’s illegal attempts to manipulate public support for its Waters of the U.S. rule and sway Congressional opinion regarding legislation to address that rule have undermined the integrity of the rulemaking process and demonstrated how baseless this unprecedented expansion of EPA authority really is.”
If the WOTUS law sounds familiar, it’s because the state of Colorado recently successfully sued to prevent the law from taking effect.