A Senate committee on Tuesday voted in favor of Rick Perry becoming the next secretary of energy in a mostly party-line vote, clearing the way for the full Senate to formally approve the former Texas governor to join President Donald Trump’s Cabinet.
Five Democrats joined all 12 Republicans on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to approve Perry’s nomination. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), the committee’s ranking member, led six Democratic dissenters to vote “no.” Democrats voting “aye” were: Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.), Joe Manchin (W.Va.), and Debbie Stabenow (Mich.), along with Sen. Angus King (I-Maine);
Cantwell, a constant advocate for nuclear cleanup at DOE’s Hanford Site near Richland, Wash., objected to Perry’s nomination mostly on the grounds that he would not take a firmer stance against the Trump administration’s internal proposals to scrap DOE’s Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and Fossil Energy offices.
Cutting these offices would free up more than $2.5 billion in the department’s budget — funding the Trump administration wants redirected to the National Nuclear Security Administration, the semiautonomous DOE agency charged with sustaining the U.S. nuclear stockpile, a source said last week.
Perry now needs 51 votes on the Senate floor to become secretary of energy. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had not scheduled that vote at deadline for Weapons Complex Morning Briefing.
Cantwell was the only Democrat to speak at the hearing, which lasted only about 30 minutes. The ranking member barely touched on the nuclear matters that account for some 60 percent of DOE’s budget, except to vent frustration about the Trump administration’s decision to remove the secretary of energy from the president’s National Security Council’s principals committee.
In his confirmation hearing on Jan. 19, Perry demurred when asked about his plans for the $6 billion-a-year cleanup of Cold War nuclear waste managed by DOE’s Office of Environmental Management. Likewise, he would not weigh in on whether spent fuel from commercial nuclear power plants should be stored at Yucca Mountain in Nevada — a geologic repository canceled by the Obama administration, but which congressional Republicans and some members of President Trump’s transition team favor reviving.
