In less than a week Trump’s new head of the EPA Scott Pruitt is axing more useless, wasteful programs.
This time he’s discovered that for years under the Obama administration the agency has been spending big money on annual gym memberships for EPA employees, for which of course tax payers are footing the bill.
In one local office alone, employee gym memberships tallied up to nearly fifteen grand.
With offices all over the country, those numbers add up very quickly.
But not anymore. Pruitt killed the program calling it “rather expensive.”
Good riddance.
Here’s more from Washington Examiner…
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt said Thursday that the days of gym memberships being paid for by the American taxpayer are over.
Pruitt was on “Fox and Friends,” where he was asked about documents released Wednesday that show EPA employees spent more than $15,000 on gym memberships outside of the free services they were already being given.
“Well, the gym memberships ended yesterday, it was quite something to hear about that,” Pruitt said. He said the agency is investigating the matter, saying “it was the previous administration that granted those gym memberships,” which “were rather expensive.”
“It was something that needed to end.”
The gym payments were disclosed by the conservative group Americans for Tax Reform. A receipt from the purchase showed that the EPA office on the campus of the University of Nevada in Las Vegas had charged $14,799.63 one year ago to buy 37 “1 Year Super Sport” packages at 24 Hour Fitness.
The gym memberships were bought although the EPA employees have access to the university’s fitness accommodations.
Pruitt suggested that he will target that type of misappropriation of funds in his tenure.
“The key, with respect to how we restructure, is recognizing that Washington has become way too big. It has become way too consequential in the lives of Americans,” he said.
