When the House last week passed its version of the Department of Energy’s 2024 budget, members crossed the aisle to defeat an amendment to cut the Secretary of Energy’s salary to $1.
Most of the “no” votes on the amendment from Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) were from Democrats and most of the “aye” votes were from Republicans, who control the chamber. Norman brought the amendment up for a vote in part because Granholm did not sell her stock in electric bus maker Proterra, a California-based company with manufacturing facilities in South Carolina, before President Joe Biden (D) made a virtual visit to the facility in 2021.
DOE has said Granholm divested the Proterra shares by a legal deadline after she became secretary of energy.
Among the Republicans voting “no” on the Granholm salary amendment were several whose districts or committee assignments give them influence over Department of Energy nuclear-weapon sites. In alphabetical order, the crossover Republicans were:
- Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) a member of the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee.
- Rep. John Curtis (R-Utah) whose district includes DOE’s Moab UMTRA Project, a uranium-tailings cleanup site.
- Rep. Chuck Fleischman (R-Tenn.), the chair of the House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee whose district neighbors DOE’s Oak Ridge Site and the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
- Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas) the chair of the House Appropriations Committee.
- Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), a member of the House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee whose district abuts the Hanford site in Washington state.
- Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Ida.) whose expansive district borders DOE’s massive Idaho Site and the Idaho National Laboratory. Simpson is a former chair of the House Appropriations energy and water development subcommittee.
- Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), a member, and former chair, of the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, which writes the first draft of the nuclear-weapons portions of the annual National Defense Authorization Act.
The final vote on the amendment, No. 51 for the bill, was 166-247, with 26 members not voting according to the House’s official vote sheet.
