Tamar Hallerman
GHG Monitor
6/28/13
President Barack Obama had surprisingly harsh words for Senate Republicans holding up the nomination of his pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, Gina McCarthy. In a June 25 speech at Georgetown University unveiling his broad new climate plan, the President urged the Senate to “confirm her without any further obstruction or delay.” He slammed Republicans for stalling her nomination for nearly four months. “She’s been held up for months, forced to jump through hoops no Cabinet nominee should ever have to—not because she lacks qualifications, but because there are too many in the Republican Party right now who think that the Environmental Protection Agency has no business protecting our environment from carbon pollution,” he said, underscoring McCarthy’s bipartisan credentials working as a state environmental administrator for a handful of Republican governors in the Northeast, including Mitt Romney when he was Massachusetts Governor.
Media reports this week speculated that Obama’s climate plan this week—which bypasses Congress in favor of enacting executive-level actions to limit greenhouse gas emissions in the power and transport sectors—could ultimately mean the sacrifice of McCarthy’s nomination for EPA’s top post. Senate Republicans, already livid about what they said has been EPA overreach during the President’s first term in office, said this week’s plan from the White House would hurt the economy and American competitiveness abroad. In a floor speech this week, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) highlighted what he said was a contradiction between the President’s plan for limiting carbon from existing power plants and remarks made by McCarthy during her April confirmation hearing about the Agency having no plans to regulate carbon from such sources. “I would say it is clear with today’s announcement by President Obama about existing power plants, that Gina McCarthy is either arrogant or ignorant. She either didn’t tell the truth to the Senate or she doesn’t know what is going on within her own agency. Either way, such a person cannot lead the EPA,” Barrasso said in a June 25 floor speech. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Ranking Member David Vitter (R-La.) also highlighted the idea in a press release this week.
Reid Mulling ‘Nuclear Option’
The growing squabble comes after McCarthy’s nomination has been stalled in the Senate for nearly four months, the longest a nominee for EPA Administrator has ever had to wait to be confirmed, the journal Nature recently noted. Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) continues to maintain a procedural hold on McCarthy, in protest of what he said is the lack of a federal plan for a controversial flood control project in his home state. But Blunt is not the only Republican roadblock to McCarthy’s confirmation. Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee sent the nominee more than 1,000 questions for the record following her nomination hearing in April, and have said they are not satisfied with transparency at the Agency related to the data underlying recent major air quality rulemakings, as well as the accountability of the upper leadership there.
The panel’s GOP members boycotted the committee’s first vote on McCarthy’s nomination last month. Her nomination then cleared on a strict party-line vote in committee a week later, but her status on the Senate floor remains uncertain as Democrats fear they do not have the 60 votes necessary to overcome a potential Republican filibuster. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said he would look to bring her nomination to the Senate floor next month, and threatened to use the so-called “nuclear option,” which would change the rules of the upper chamber so that lawmakers could not filibuster executive branch nominations. While that pathway could help break some of the logjam of Obama Administration nominees awaiting Senate consideration, the move is risky because it could poison relations with Republicans moving forward on other issues.
During his speech Tuesday, the President said he hopes climate change will no longer be a partisan issue. “I want to be clear, I am willing to work with anybody—Republicans, Democrats, independents, libertarians, greens, anybody—to combat this threat on behalf of our kids,” he said. But Obama added that he no longer has “much patience for anyone who denies that this challenge is real.” “Sticking your head in the sand might make you feel safer, but it’s not going to protect you from the coming storm. And ultimately, we will be judged as a people, as a society and as a country on where we go from here,” he said.
