Joseph Goffman

Joseph Goffman, associate assistant administrator for climate and senior counsel to the assistant administrator for air and radiation at the EPA under President Barack Obama, said managers during his tenure viewed the career employees as “an incredibly precious resource.”

Joseph Goffman, the EPA’s former associate assistant administrator for climate during the Obama administration, said he thought the lawmakers did an important service by underscoring the rules and social norms that have historically safeguarded agencies from outside influence.

“They’re playing a purist’s game,” Joseph Goffman, former senior counsel in the EPA’s air office during the Obama administration, said in an interview. “The authors of this strategy are very, very skeptical of any kind of climate policy and dead set against the EPA using the Clean Air Act as an authority for such a policy.”