Congressional Hearing Blasts Chief Architects Heidi King and Bill Wehrum on Clean Cars Rollback

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Today, two subcommittees of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce held a hearing on the Trump Administration’s planned rollback of the fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions, known as the Clean Car Standards. The hearing was peppered with hard-hitting questions about the wide-spread and devastating role the proposed rollback will have on public health, the environment, consumers, and the auto industry itself. Most notably, Bill Wehrum four times refused to answer Representative McNerney’s questions on whether he believes in climate science and whether it poses a danger to human health and Heidi King claimed the rollback would have little impact on the climate.

In response, the Sierra Club’s Associate Director for Federal Advocacy Will Anderson released the following statement: 

“Today’s hearing confirmed that King and Wehrum cannot be trusted to put the interests of the American people before the profits of polluting industries. This was magnified by their inability to answer basic questions about climate science and claims that their dirty rule would have little impact on climate as they defended the gutting of our nation’s most effective climate program. We applaud Congress for its oversight and questioning the Administration’s dirty rollback that benefits no one but oil industry executives.”