EPA Official Finally Testifies to House on Controversial Emissions Rules After Refusal in May

The Environmental Protection Agency in Washington on Dec. 12, 2018. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

The House is no longer “Waiting for Goffman,” a top Environmental Protection Agency official who appeared before Congress on June 21 after declining to show up to a similar May 17 hearing.

In both cases, the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability wanted the Office of Air and Radiation’s Joseph Goffman to discuss his agency’s proposed tailpipe emissions rules.

The EPA anticipates its rules will help drive a mass-scale transition to electric cars in the next decade. It predicts that two-thirds of new light-body vehicles sold in the United States will be electric by 2032.

Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas) wasted no time in asking Goffman the obvious question: why didn’t he show up last time?

Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas) speaks during the House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on June 8, 2022. (Jason Andrew-Pool/Getty Images)

“For my part, as with many things, it was primarily scheduling,” Goffman responded.

However, the bureaucrat’s official EPA calendar was empty from April 1 onward, including on May 17.

The Epoch Times has reached out to the EPA seeking comment.

When Fallon asked Goffman whether the choice to refuse had come from another agency official, Goffman said he had “participated in the decision.”

“So you couldn’t change and adjust your schedule for the United States’ Congress?” the Texas congressman asked.

“It was difficult,” replied Goffman, a veteran of the Obama EPA whose LinkedIn profile credits him with a leading role in developing that administration’s Clean Power Plan and standards for carbon pollution.

The Biden official has also served as counsel for Senate Democrats in that chamber’s environmental committee. He was also a senior attorney at the environmental group now called the Environmental Defense Fund and, more recently, executive director of the Environmental Law Program at Harvard Law School.

“What was more important?” Fallon asked.

Goffman dodged the question: “Well, let me assure you, Mr. Chairman, that I am pleased to be here today. I understand that it’s my obligation and commitment not only to be here today but to continue to provide this committee and the Congress with–”

“I think this is an institutional thing,” Fallon interrupted, calling for “bipartisan, frankly, outrage” over the EPA’s decision not to attend the May hearing.

“I would hope that in the future you would clear your calendar for Congress,” he continued.

Goffman Awaits Confirmation Amid Controversy

Goffman’s back-and-forth with Fallon comes amid a number of conflicts and controversies involving the official, who Biden nominated to lead the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation.

The nomination finally passed through a key Senate committee in April of this year, weeks after the EPA released its controversial vehicle emissions proposals–and weeks before Goffman chose not to appear at the House hearing to respond to those proposals.

“Mr. Goffman has demonstrated a dedication to public service and a deep sense of integrity. He has implemented the law in a way that provides cleaner air and a safer climate for all, while also giving industry predictability and certainty,” Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) said after Goffman moved forward in a 10-9 vote.

Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) (left-right) walk out of a Democratic Caucus meeting at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 19, 2018. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

The same committee deadlocked in a 10-10 vote on Goffman’s nomination in November 2022, when the Senate was split down the middle.

“Both throughout his [Goffman’s] previous service in the Obama administration and during the 22 months he has been at EPA in the Biden administration in a non-Senate-confirmed role, he has made his leadership style and policy views clear,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (D-W.Va.) said at the time.

“He has worked to develop regulations that harm our energy sector, will raise prices on American families and businesses, and are based on overreaching, illegal interpretations of the Clean Air Act as found by the Supreme Court,” she added.

Protect the Public’s Trust, a group founded by Trump administration veteran Michael Chamberlain, has been calling for transparency over “apparent ethics violation” involving Goffman’s former employer, Harvard.

In April 2021, Goffman communicated with a former Harvard colleague in connection with the arrangement of a meeting.

“Joseph Goffman appeared to violate the Biden Administration Ethics Pledge (EO 13989) prohibiting him from participating in any particular matters involving his former employer, Harvard University,” Protect the Public’s Trust wrote in an August 2021 ethics complaint to the EPA and its inspector general.

In records obtained via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the agency’s ethics director, Justina Fugh, characterized Goffman’s move as an “oops” that “occurred.”

“Although a technical violation of the pledge, I don’t see that there are any ramifications. The error has been corrected. I have notified the EPA Chief of Staff and the White House already, and White House Counsel’s office has declined to take any further action on the pledge violation,” she wrote in a May 2021 email contained in those records.

The Epoch Times has also sought comment on this from the EPA.

‘Racial Justice Through Direct Climate Action’

Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) defended Goffman and the EPA’s vision.

“While we have a different witness today, the science and the facts remain the same,” she said.

“Pollution is nonpartisan. It impacts all our communities differently,” Bush told her colleagues before detailing the higher asthma rates among black children relative to white children.

(L-R) U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Ca.), Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) participate in a news conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC, on Dec. 8, 2021. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

The Missouri representative said that putting the agency’s rules in place would yield “racial justice through direct climate action” and praised Goffman for “leadership.”

Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-N.C.), whose district covers the westernmost tip of North Carolina, asked Goffman how the rules “affect vehicle affordability for families?”

“It’s a central preoccupation of ours as well,” Goffman responded.

“Among other things, we are working with the auto industry itself,” he added.

The official said that automakers “have already carefully mapped out business plans” involving more electric vehicles over the decade now unfolding.

Citing the Schumer-Manchin bill and infrastructure bill passed last session, Goffman said Congress has “introduced into the economy a number of measures whose purpose and ultimate effect will be to make the manufacturing of these vehicles less expensive, and therefore give the car companies the opportunity to sell the vehicles they’re planning to market at affordable prices.”

Edwards remained skeptical.

“There’s a huge concern from the people that I represent for them being forced to buy a vehicle that is well, well out of their range,” he said.