GOP argues bill would block ‘radical’ EPA student programs

A conservative House Republican wants to block Environmental Protection Agency student internship and fellowship programs that he alleges are catering only to students that share the Obama administration’s “radical” priorities.

Freshman Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) floated legislation Friday – the “EPA Student Nondiscrimination Act” – that would prevent funding for the Environmental Justice eco-Ambassador Program and greenhouse gas programs.

The eco-Ambassador program recruits minority graduate students for 10-week, $6,000 internships at EPA sites to work with community-based groups on environmental justice.

Pompeo’s office, in announcing the bill, said the EPA program’s application guidelines show that it seeks to “recruit and hire, at taxpayer expense, only those college students who are ideologically in line with the Obama Administration’s radical environmental policies.”

Environmental justice initiatives seek to ensure that low-income and minority populations don’t continue to bear disproportionate environmental burdens.

“At a time when millions of Americans cannot find work and are saddled with record deficits and crippling environmental regulations, spending $6,000 of taxpayer money per student to act as tools of this Administration’s radical policies is clearly not acceptable—nor is it ever the role of the federal government to indoctrinate,” Pompeo said in a statement Friday.

The internship program seeks grad students who are pursuing green and health-related degrees, and have been involved with or are interested in “environmental justice, social justice issues and/or environmental health disparities in an academic, volunteer and/or employment setting.”

Pompeo’s bill is co-sponsored by Reps. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), John Carter (R-Texas), Greg Harper (R-Miss.) and David McKinley (R-W.Va.). It prevents any grants, stipends, salary or expenses for eco-Ambassador program and “programs related to the study of greenhouse gas emissions.”

It states: 

No student internship, fellowship, scholarship, or other student program administered by the Environmental Protection Agency may establish any requirement that an applicant possess any experience that constitutes an endorsement of a particular political position with regard to environmental protection.

The bill also requires an EPA report to Congress on its procedures for recruiting and hiring students.