There was no word Tuesday on when the three nominees to fill out the Nuclear Regulatory Commission might get confirmation votes from the U.S. Senate.
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Oct. 25 sent the Trump administration’s Sept. 5 nomination of sitting Commissioner Jeff Baran for a floor vote by the full chamber. That was more than three months after two earlier Trump administration nominees, Annie Caputo and David Wright, got the thumbs-up from the panel.
The Senate on Tuesday debated and then voted 62-37 to approve Kirstjen Nielsen’s nomination as homeland security secretary, following John Kelly’s move to become White House chief of staff.
“After that we might have another announcement. But right now I do not have any guidance,” David Popp, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), said prior to the vote on Nielsen.
Representatives for the top two lawmakers on the Environment and Public Works Committee, Chairman John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and Ranking Member Tom Carper (D-Del.), said they also had no details regarding the schedule for confirmation votes, including whether they would happen this year.
Caputo, a nuclear engineer and policy adviser to Barrasso, and Wright, an energy consultant and former president of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, are solid Republican picks for the commission. Carper had demanded that their nominations be paired with that of Baran, a former Democrat staffer on Capitol Hill who has served on the commission since October 2014.
With Senate approval, Baran would serve a full five-year term to June 30, 2023. Caputo and Wright would fill vacant terms ending, respectively, on June 30, 2021, and June 30, 2020.
