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Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., traded barbs with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin in a fiery Senate hearing on Wednesday over cost-benefit analysis of coal plants — and whether the EPA, under Trump’s leadership, had enough to weigh whether hospital bills and insurance claims should factor into the calculus.
The heated back-and-forth left Zeldin taking a thinly-veiled dig at Whitehouse long after the Democratic environmentalist had concluded his line of questioning.
“We just want to stick to the truth,” Zeldin said.
“We want to stick to the science. If you don’t agree with them, you don’t follow their logic, then they’ll want to vilify you… and I’m not going to take morality lessons from people who join all-white country clubs,” he added, referring to reports of Whitehouse’s family membership at Bailey’s Beach Club, a beach club formerly known as Spouting Rock Beach Association.
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EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin attends a meeting with President Donald Trump and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., on March 13, 2025. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
“I think the people who are running the place are still working on that and I’m sorry it hasn’t happened yet,” Whitehouse said in 2017, referring to allowing minority members. “It’s a long tradition in Rhode Island and there are many of them and we just need to work our way through the issues.”
The interaction comes as lawmakers weigh President Donald Trump’s 2027 budget request for the EPA, a framework that has alarmed Democrats for its proposed 50% slash to the agency’s funding.
Zeldin’s clash with Whitehouse also underscores sharp divisions between the administration and Democrats in Congress over what threat, if any, climate change poses and what resources the U.S. should devote to combating it.
Whitehouse, who panned the proposed budget, argued that Zeldin was ignoring secondary costs brought on by fossil fuels.
“One plant in Michigan has already cost Michiganders $600 million in excess health costs. That is money out of consumers’ pockets, and into the pockets of your fossil fuel polluters, Trump’s big donors. Are you even tracking the consumer costs of those coal plants?” Whitehouse asked Zeldin.
“We’re going to get to talk about math?” Zeldin retorted. “Oh, this is great; I don’t even know where to start.”
“Are you even tracking the consumer costs of those coal plants?” Whitehouse asked again. “Answer that question: Are you even tracking the consumer costs of those coal plants?”
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Former Rep. Lee Zeldin, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for EPA administrator, speaks during his Senate Environment and Public Works confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 16, 2025. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Zeldin began replying that the EPA did, in fact, track consumer costs of energy but was cut off.
“Where are you tracking the consumer costs of those coal plants?” Whitehouse interjected.
Zeldin, setting aside the matter of tracking, turned to confront Whitehouse’s underlying argument about the cost-benefit of coal across the country.
“Are you kidding me? Coal plants even staying open – you think that the math is that it’s better for West Virginia if you close down their coal plants and put these people out of work and tell them to learn how to code?” Zeldin said.
“According to you, in your mind, that’s saving West Virginia? Is it saving them on energy access? Is it saving them on jobs?” Zeldin added.
Whitehouse, running out of his allotted time, closed his line of questioning by proposing that Trump’s administration stood to gain from energy-aligned donors.
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Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., conducts the Senate Budget Committee hearing titled “The Default on America Act: Blackmail, Brinkmanship, and Billionaire Backroom Deals” in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on May 4, 2023. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc)
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“You’re raising costs on purpose because the money that you get when you raise costs from consumers goes to Trump’s big fossil fuel donors,” Whitehouse said.
The EPA was given roughly $8.82 billion in the 2026 fiscal year. For 2027, Trump has requested just $4.2B for 2027 — a drop that would represent a 52% decrease year over year.