Post by Logan on Mar 18, 2016 3:48:57 GMT -6
WASHINGTON — Time and again, Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan acknowledged in a tense congressional hearing Thursday that he had been aware of complaints about the drinking water in Flint, including from news reports his aides had emailed him. Yet he had accepted assurances, he said, that the problems were not severe.
Democrats listening to his testimony were dubious. “Governor Snyder, plausible deniability only works when it’s plausible,” said Representative Matt Cartwright, Democrat of Pennsylvania. “You were not in a medically induced coma for a year.”
The rebuke was one of the more caustic in an extraordinary turn on Capitol Hill: A sitting Republican governor appearing before a Republican-led congressional panel, answering wave after wave of questions about his administration’s role in the Flint water crisis — “the most glaring failure of government since Hurricane Katrina,” as Representative Brendan Boyle, another Pennsylvania Democrat, described it.
Gina McCarthy, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, also came under fire, pressured by Republicans to accept responsibility for the lead contamination of Flint’s water supply and sometimes shouted down as she deflected blame onto the State of Michigan.
Read more: www.nytimes.com/2016/03/18/us/michigan-governor-tells-congress-he-was-misled-on-flint-water.html
Democrats listening to his testimony were dubious. “Governor Snyder, plausible deniability only works when it’s plausible,” said Representative Matt Cartwright, Democrat of Pennsylvania. “You were not in a medically induced coma for a year.”
The rebuke was one of the more caustic in an extraordinary turn on Capitol Hill: A sitting Republican governor appearing before a Republican-led congressional panel, answering wave after wave of questions about his administration’s role in the Flint water crisis — “the most glaring failure of government since Hurricane Katrina,” as Representative Brendan Boyle, another Pennsylvania Democrat, described it.
Gina McCarthy, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, also came under fire, pressured by Republicans to accept responsibility for the lead contamination of Flint’s water supply and sometimes shouted down as she deflected blame onto the State of Michigan.
Read more: www.nytimes.com/2016/03/18/us/michigan-governor-tells-congress-he-was-misled-on-flint-water.html