Tamar Hallerman
GHG Monitor
5/10/13
Senate Republicans blocked a planned committee vote this week on the White House’s nomination of Gina McCarthy for Environmental Protection Agency Administrator, with the committee’s GOP members boycotting a planned business meeting set to be held May 9. The move, which came less than an hour before the meeting, left the committee’s Democratic members unable to vote on the nomination. In a letter to Committee Chair Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), the Republicans said they were skipping the vote because EPA has “stonewalled” several transparency requests made by Ranking Member David Vitter (R-La.). “The Republicans on the EPW Committee have asked EPA to honor five very reasonable and basic requests in conjunction with the nomination of Gina McCarthy, which focus on openness and transparency. While Chairman Boxer has allowed EPA adequate time to fully respond before any mark-up on the nomination, EPA has stonewalled on four of the five categories,” the Republicans said in a joint statement prior to the meeting.
The GOP boycott left Boxer and her Democratic colleagues unable to vote on McCarthy’s nomination, which has been pending for more than two months. Despite the Republican absence, committee Democrats met anyway on May 9, criticizing what they said was Republican “obstructionism of unprecedented proportions” on McCarthy’s nomination. “At this stage, their opposition … shows how outside the mainstream and obstructionist they are,” Boxer said. Democrats said that Committee Republicans barraged McCarthy with an unprecedented number of questions for the record—more than 1,000 queries—ahead of the vote on her nomination, easily trumping previous records. Some of those responses, which totaled 123 pages, were released earlier this week by Vitter, who said McCarthy’s answers were “unacceptable.”
‘Up To EPA’
During McCarthy’s confirmation hearing last month, Senate EPW Republicans hammered the nominee for what they said was a systematic lack of transparency at the agency related its use of science during the rulemaking process. The GOP also voiced concerned about Freedom of Information Act requests and the use of e-mail aliases by top EPA officials. They grouped their transparency concerns into five requests to EPA, which included that the underlying data used during the promulgation of Clean Air Act rules be made public and that all of McCarthy’s private e-mail accounts are “exhaustively reviewed” in order to search for official EPA business.
Vitter said committee Republicans were not satisfied with the responses the agency gave them regarding their five queries and said it was “completely up to EPA” to determine the timeframe for moving McCarthy’s nomination ahead by answering those questions. “This is about our key five openness and transparency requests. Everyone—Gina McCarthy, the EPA, the Democratic members of the Committee—has known from the beginning that this is our focus,” he said during a May 9 press conference. “We’re not asking the Obama Administration to walk away from their views on carbon or anything else. We are asking for openness and transparency and we are asking that present law be followed in a full, fair and reasonable way.”
GOP Asks Boxer to Adhere to Committee Custom
Committee Republicans wrote to Boxer two weeks ago requesting that she postpone the vote until McCarthy and EPA adequately answers their outstanding questions. They called on Boxer this week to adhere to what they said was committee custom by holding off on the vote. They highlighted Democrats’ 2003 boycott of President George W. Bush’s EPA nominee Michael Leavitt. “Then-Chairman [Jim Inhofe] followed the rules … and scheduled an official mark-up for two weeks later. We ask and expect that you do the same,” they said in a letter to Boxer.
Boxer said she delayed the vote on McCarthy for three weeks at Vitter’s request to “give Republicans the time they needed.” But she qualified in a committee fact sheet that “the notion that EPA has been non-responsive to Senate Republicans is simply incorrect” and that it was time for a vote. Committee rules stipulate that at least two members of the minority party be present in order to reach a quorum, which is required for the panel to take any actions. Further, Senate rules call on a majority of a committee’s membership to be physically present at a vote before any actions can be taken. Boxer vowed to use all parliamentary options at her disposal, including changing committee rules, in order to clear McCarthy’s nomination if Republicans continue their boycott. If Boxer chooses to ignore or change the committee rule requiring two minority party members, she could do so if all 10 Democrats on the panel to appear in person to vote. That could prove to be challenging given that Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) has been largely absent from the Senate in recent months due to health problems.
‘Stop the Theater’
During a May 9 press briefing aboard Air Force One, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney called on Republicans to “stop the theater and move forward” with McCarthy’s confirmation. “We call on Republicans in the Senate to stop gumming up the works when it comes to the confirmation process of nominees who are enormously qualified for the jobs that the President has asked them to fill and to get about the business of confirming them,” he said. Even if the Committee does approve McCarthy, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) appears to be maintaining his hold on the EPA deputy’s nomination. Blunt vowed to stall the nomination until the Obama Administration announces a timeline forward for a controversial and long-delayed flood control project in his state.
President Obama tapped McCarthy in March to fill the position vacated in February by former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson. In her current role as EPA Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation, McCarthy has served as the primary architect of the Obama Administration’s landmark air quality regulations, including limits on carbon emissions from new fossil fuel plants and technology standards clamping down on mercury and air toxics emitted from coal units. She spent several decades as a local and state-level environmental regulator in New England prior to serving at EPA.
