Scott Pruitt Quotes

I'm going to have a very thoughtful and meaningful enforcement response to Superfund to make sure that we are achieving good outcomes for citizens across the country with respect to that entire portfolio of 1,336 or so sites.

- Scott Pruitt

Ozone is something that we most definitely have to regulate. It's a very important thing to regulate.

- Scott Pruitt

EPA will set a national standard for greenhouse gas emissions that allows auto manufacturers to make cars that people both want and can afford - while still expanding environmental and safety benefits of newer cars.

- Scott Pruitt

There simply is no greater threat to individual liberty and the viability of our great nation than the threat that comes from the continued consolidation of power in Washington, a consolidation that flies in the face of the division of power between the federal government and the states that is required by the Constitution.

- Scott Pruitt

We're a small state. Our quantity of representation in Washington is not as large as a Texas, an Ohio, or a New York. So when decisions are made on the federal level, our voice can get drowned out.

- Scott Pruitt

I happen to think the Paris accord, the Paris treaty, or the Paris Agreement, if you will, should have been treated as a treaty, should have gone through Senate confirmation.

- Scott Pruitt

It's unwise in business to have one client or two clients. It's unwise in electricity to have one source or two sources.

- Scott Pruitt

The Constitution forbids states from banning all religion from public spaces and from making churches the ghettos of religion where all manifestations of faith are kept separate from public life. Religious people have an equal right to participate in the public square and to have their contributions to Oklahoma history and society recognized.

- Scott Pruitt

Lead poisoning is an insidious menace that robs our citizens of their fullest potential.

- Scott Pruitt

Our First Amendment should preserve the right of Hindus and Muslims to practice their faith.

- Scott Pruitt

There is no reason why EPA's role should ebb and flow based on a particular administration or a particular administrator.

- Scott Pruitt

My battles have been against federal actions that exceed the powers our Founders granted to the federal government in the constitution.

- Scott Pruitt

I've led a grand jury.

- Scott Pruitt

The federal government should not be able to hide behind sovereign immunity when the facts don't meet the protections.

- Scott Pruitt

The 'environmental left' tells us that, though we have natural resources like natural gas and oil and coal, and though we can feed the world, we should keep those things in the ground, put up fences, and be about prohibition.

- Scott Pruitt

Since my election as Oklahoma attorney general in 2010, I have been a proud member of a group of federalism-minded state attorneys general who have methodically, indeed relentlessly, worked to restore the proper balance of power between the federal government and the states.

- Scott Pruitt

Like the invention of the printing press before it, the Internet has been the greatest instrumentality of free speech and the exchange of ideas in the history of mankind.

- Scott Pruitt

The Constitutional framework of checks and balances matters.

- Scott Pruitt

Agencies and the executive branch need to enforce the law. They don't need to fill in the spaces if Congress doesn't act.

- Scott Pruitt

What is true environmentalism? I think it's environmental stewardship - not prohibition.

- Scott Pruitt

We should not have to choose between supporting jobs and supporting the environment.

- Scott Pruitt

When I took office in 2011, I made a commitment that the Office of Attorney General would find ways to do more while spending fewer taxpayer dollars.

- Scott Pruitt

As Oklahoma attorney general, it is not my job to formulate or implement Oklahoma's plan, but it is my job to preserve Oklahoma's right to do so - particularly when the Clean Air Act so clearly recognizes that Oklahomans, and not federal bureaucrats, are best situated to determine Oklahoma energy and environmental policies.

- Scott Pruitt

As Oklahomans, we believe in bold entrepreneurship and good stewardship.

- Scott Pruitt

Few things are as sacred and as fundamental to Oklahomans as the constitutional rights of free speech and the free exercise of religion.

- Scott Pruitt

Oklahomans care about the environment and the state in which we live.

- Scott Pruitt

EPA's role is even broader than water infrastructure and cleaning up contaminated land - the agency also has a key role in allowing projects to move forward by reviewing environmental impact statements during the permitting process.

- Scott Pruitt

The biblical world view with respect to these issues is that we have a responsibility to manage and cultivate, harvest the natural resources that we've been blessed with to truly bless our fellow mankind.

- Scott Pruitt

I think executive orders with Donald Trump would be a very blunt instrument with respect to the Constitution.

- Scott Pruitt

What I've said about consent orders and consent decrees is that we shouldn't regulate through litigation.

- Scott Pruitt

Most lawsuits against the EPA historically have come either because of the agency's lack of regard for a statute or because the EPA failed in an obligation or deadline.

- Scott Pruitt

For someone to say that someone's a skeptic or a climate denier about the climate changing, that's just nonsensical. We see that throughout history. We impact the climate by our activity. How much so is very difficult to determine with respect to our CO2 or carbon footprint, but we obviously do.

- Scott Pruitt

My job is to enforce the laws as passed by whom? Congress. They give me my authority. That's the jurisdictional responsibilities that I have, and when litigation is used to regulate... that's abusive. That's wrong.

- Scott Pruitt

EPA can and should now focus on getting real results in the fight for clean air, land, and water.

- Scott Pruitt

Congress passes statutes, and those statutes are very clear on the job EPA has to do.

- Scott Pruitt

The EPA has performed a very important role for us all.

- Scott Pruitt

There is a reason to have an agency called the EPA, and it has served an historical purpose I believe is vital to this country.

- Scott Pruitt

There are issues the EPA should be dealing with. When I talk about the EPA and its role with the states, it's not an abolitionist view, that we don't need that agency. It's that the agency should act within the outlines established by Congress.

- Scott Pruitt

When you declare a 'war on coal' from a regulatory perspective, the question has to be asked: where's that in the statute? Where did Congress empower the EPA to declare a war on coal?

- Scott Pruitt

Our battles against the EPA and other rogue federal agencies aren't about a desire for dirtier air or zero regulation. They are about our right as a state to control our own destiny and resist attempts by the administration to ramrod a wish list of regulations through agency heads instead of garnering approval from Congress.

- Scott Pruitt

'Sue and settle' involves the creation of environmental rules and regulations through lawsuits filed by environmental groups against the EPA, not through Congress or proper rule-making.

- Scott Pruitt

I spent a couple years just earnestly praying, asking the question that I don't think we ask enough: 'God what do you want to do with me?' Really getting into our prayer closet, seeking His heart, asking what He wants to do in our lives.

- Scott Pruitt

Threats I have faced are unprecedented.

- Scott Pruitt

It is no secret that Washington, D.C., is a tempest of people and institutions relentlessly seeking power over the lives of everyday Americans.

- Scott Pruitt

I think that the more we, as a state, yield and cede decisions to the federal government, the lesser we'll be for it as a state.

- Scott Pruitt

There aren't sufficient scientific facts to establish the theory of evolution, and it deals with the origins of man, which is more from a philosophical standpoint than a scientific standpoint.

- Scott Pruitt

We've made extraordinary progress on the environment over the decades, and that's something we should celebrate.

- Scott Pruitt

This idea that if you're pro-environment you're anti-energy is just something we've got to change, so that attitude is something we're working on very much.

- Scott Pruitt

We just need to make sure that we get somebody in there that respects the Constitution, respects the rule of law, that restores the proper balance between the states and federal government. I have great confidence Jeb Bush would do that.

- Scott Pruitt

If the president is allowed to govern by executive action, then the rule of law greatly suffers.

- Scott Pruitt

The whole purpose of CAFE standards is to make cars more efficient that people are actually buying.

- Scott Pruitt

Federalism is not one state dictating to the rest of the country what should occur in the area of CAFE.

- Scott Pruitt

I believe that Donald Trump in the White House would be more abusive to the Constitution than Barack Obama, and that's saying a lot.

- Scott Pruitt

The greatest threat we've had to economic growth has been that those in industry don't know what is expected of them. Rules come that are outside of statutes. Rules get changed midway. It creates vast uncertainty and paralysis, and re-establishing a vigorous commitment to rule of law is going to help a lot.

- Scott Pruitt

Think about how tangible it would be to the citizens of Washington State to finally have the Hanford nuclear site cleaned up. Think about how tangible it would be to the citizens along the Hudson River to fix that pollution. These are some of the most direct things we can do to benefit our environment.

- Scott Pruitt

When you look at farmers and ranchers, for example, they are our first environmentalists. They are our first conservationists. When you look at the greatest asset that they have, it is their land. They care about the water that they drink. They care about the air that they breathe. We should see them as partners, not adversaries.

- Scott Pruitt

I think the most grievous threat that we have today is this imperialistic judiciary, this judicial monarchy that has it wrong on what the First Amendment's about and has an objective to create religious sterility in the public square, which is wholly inconsistent with the Founding Fathers' view.

- Scott Pruitt

Our religious freedoms are under constant attack from a variety of groups who seek to undermine our constitutional rights and threaten our founding principles.

- Scott Pruitt

I might not like a statute... but if you know what to expect, you can plan. The law is static. It's stable. It gives you confidence. You know you have to act a certain way.

- Scott Pruitt

Our roads and bridges form the essence of interstate commerce in this country and have for some time.

- Scott Pruitt

Now having the honor of working for him, it is abundantly clear that President Trump is the most consequential leader of our time.

- Scott Pruitt

Facts are facts, and fiction is fiction, and a lie doesn't become truth just because it appears on the front page of the newspaper.

- Scott Pruitt

We know humans have most flourished during times of what? Warming trends. So I think there's assumptions made that because the climate is warming, that that necessarily is a bad thing. Do we really know what the ideal surface temperature should be in the year 2100, in the year 2018?

- Scott Pruitt

My kids are wonderfully talented individuals, and their world view is wonderful.

- Scott Pruitt

Agencies exist to administer the law.

- Scott Pruitt

I am a firm believer that federal agencies exist to administer laws passed by Congress, as intended.

- Scott Pruitt

We need a president willing to embrace the idea that Washington is not the answer to all, or even most, of our problems, regardless of who is in charge.

- Scott Pruitt

There are very important questions around the climate issue that folks really don't get to. And that's one of the reasons why I've talked about having an honest, open, transparent debate about what do we know, what don't we know, so the American people can be informed and they can make decisions on their own with respect to these issues.

- Scott Pruitt

As we do our work in D.C., we should do our work in collaboration and in partnership, in cohesion with states so that we can work on environmental issues from Superfund to air quality to water quality across the full spectrum in things that we do in partnership with those folks.

- Scott Pruitt

What the American people deserve, I think, is a true, legitimate, peer-reviewed, objective, transparent discussion about CO2.

- Scott Pruitt

This notion that we cannot be about jobs and stewardship of the environment is just simply not right. We've always done that well as a country. We haven't had to choose.

- Scott Pruitt

We're saying environmental stewardship and jobs in the economy. We can do both together.

- Scott Pruitt

We, as a country, have always used innovative technology to advance environmental stewardship, reduction of those pollutants, but also grown our economy at the same time.

- Scott Pruitt

In our constitutional system, states are free to make decisions and bear the political consequences, good or bad, of those choices.

- Scott Pruitt

If you can tell me what gun, type of gun, I can possess, then I didn't really get that right to keep and bear arms from God. It was not bequeathed to me; it was not unalienable, right?

- Scott Pruitt

We need fuel diversity as far as the generation of electricity because you can only get so much natural gas through the pipelines.

- Scott Pruitt

The climate is changing. That's not the debate. The debate is how do we know what the ideal surface temperature is in 2100?

- Scott Pruitt

I spent many hours in the batting cage. I remember many days when my hands were pretty cut up and bleeding.

- Scott Pruitt

We are blessed with great national resources, and we should be good stewards of those.

- Scott Pruitt

We can be about jobs and growth and be good stewards of our environment.

- Scott Pruitt

Thankfully, President Trump has made clear: The regulatory assault on American workers is over.

- Scott Pruitt

I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do, and there's tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact.

- Scott Pruitt

When you hang around people who believe in you, it kind of uplifts your spirit a little bit. And you can see great things happen.

- Scott Pruitt

Americans who want a healthy and clean environment expect lawful, effective, and economically sound regulation - the Clean Power Plan failed on all three counts.

- Scott Pruitt

Truly and clearly, the climate changes.

- Scott Pruitt

When an American government takes on characteristics that elevate the state above the individual, it must be vigorously opposed as a form of, or step toward, tyranny.

- Scott Pruitt

There is a reason and a need to have an Environmental Protection Agency.

- Scott Pruitt

I cut my teeth on religious liberty issues.

- Scott Pruitt

The federal government must retreat from its hyperactive involvement in areas traditionally under states' authority and refuse future temptations to regulate and legislate on every issue that happens to come to mind.

- Scott Pruitt

We can be pro-growth, pro-jobs, and pro-environment.

- Scott Pruitt

The last thing we need in Washington is more federal hubris.

- Scott Pruitt

It is hubris that has gotten us into trouble in Washington. It is humility, principled leadership, and unwavering faith in the power of the states, the people, and our Constitution that will get us out.

- Scott Pruitt

No one has done more to advance the rule of law than President Trump.

- Scott Pruitt

Conservatives deserve a consistent and thoughtful vision for the role of federal government in relationship to states.

- Scott Pruitt

Safety and health of water is clearly a compelling government interest.

- Scott Pruitt

There are air-quality issues that cross state lines. There are water-quality issues, obviously, that cross state lines.

- Scott Pruitt

This paradigm that says we have to choose industry over the environment or the environment over industry is the old way of thinking.

- Scott Pruitt

I don't hang with polluters; I prosecute them.

- Scott Pruitt

America's infrastructure was once the envy of the world.

- Scott Pruitt