Let’s hope Scott Pruitt, the former head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, has no presidential ambitions. Or if he does, that the voters are frugal enough to quash them.
If not, Pruitt could bankrupt the country on Secret Service protection alone.
This week, the EPA’s internal watchdog released a highly critical report on Pruitt’s costly obsession with being protected during the year and a half he headed that federal agency for Donald Trump.
Pruitt insisted that he needed round-the-clock bodyguards, something no other EPA administrator before or after him has deemed necessary.
As a result of this paranoia that people were out to get him, the secret detail around Pruitt more than tripled in size and its cost more than doubled. And, the report said, because Pruitt liked to travel in style, often flying in pricey first-class seats with his bodyguard, the travel costs alone of his security tripled to about $70,000 a month.
Although Pruitt’s bodyguard excesses were the worst of his wastefulness, he made lots of financial misjudgments. Remember the $43,000 soundproof booth he charged to taxpayers because he felt he needed it to make private phone calls? Or the $130 fountain pens he ordered? Or what about the nice Capitol Hill condo he leased at slumlord prices from a fossil fuels lobbyist?
Pruitt came to Washington to supposedly help businesses be more profitable by relieving them of excessive regulations. He arrogantly decided that qualified him to be treated like royalty.
