Green group calls on Pruitt to pay back first-class flight costs

The nation’s largest environmental group is calling on Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Scott Pruitt to repay the government for his first- and business-class flights.

The Sierra Club’s demand came Friday, a day after the EPA said Pruitt has been taking premium-class flights because of interactions with unruly passengers at airports, including one who told him he was “f–king up the environment.”

The green group said the EPA’s reasoning doesn’t prove a need for the thousands upon thousands of taxpayer dollars that the agency has spent on premium-class travel.

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“Scott Pruitt’s inability to handle criticism is not a reason why he should blow more than $100,000 in our tax dollars on his luxury flights around the world. Anyone in the real world has heard far worse in morning traffic or the bleachers of a baseball game,” Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said in a statement.

Brune cited former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price and Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin’s payments to the government for their travel-cost controversies, saying Pruitt should be next.

“Scott Pruitt is out of excuses — it’s time he paid the price and pay back every penny of taxpayer money he’s wasted on his first-class travel habits. Donald Trump fired disgraced former HHS Secretary Tom Price for the same scandalous behavior, and Pruitt should be held to the same standard.”

Regulations usually restrict all federal employees to flying coach class, with a few exceptions, including for security.