The House Energy and Commerce Committee released their subcommittee assignments Thursday, including picks for the energy and environment panels with jurisdiction over nuclear waste agencies and programs.
In a full committee organizational meeting Thursday afternoon, Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), the chair, reviewed the assignments, which revealed no major change in Democratic leadership for either subcommittee.
Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) will continue to chair the energy subcommittee, which oversees the Department of Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.) will head up the environment subcommittee, which has jurisdiction over radioactive waste. Reps. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and David McKinley (R-W.V.) will serve respectively as ranking members.
Most recently, the Energy and Commerce committee passed the ill-fated 2019 Nuclear Waste Policy Act Amendments Act, which would have restarted work on the Yucca Mountain repository and greenlit the construction interim storage sites. The bill never saw a vote on the House floor, despite a virtually identical piece of legislation passing the lower chamber on a strongly bipartisan basis the year before.
