The Senate, working through the first two weeks of its traditional August recess, expects to vote on a package of executive-branch nominees soon, though it was not clear Tuesday whether Energy Department officials-designate would be among them.
Addressing the Capitol Hill press corps’ weekly stakeout Tuesday, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said the Senate soon would start work on “a nominations package the Democratic leader [Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.)] and I have been talking about.”
At the stakeout, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), said 84 of President Donald Trump’s executive-branch nominees have been approved by the various Senate oversight committees but are still waiting for a vote on the floor of the upper chamber.
Dan Brouillette, the insurance industry lobbyist and former DOE legislative affairs staffer, is among those. Brouillette, the Donald Trump administration’s nominee for deputy energy secretary, was cleared by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in June. Shortly after that, Nevada news outlets reported Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) was blocking his confirmation over concerns about DOE’s plans to turn Yucca Mountain in Nye County, Nev., into a permanent nuclear-waste disposal site.
A Heller spokesperson did not reply to a request for comment Tuesday.
Meanwhile, a Senate aide said Tuesday the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee still has not scheduled a vote on a trio of nominees for senior DOE leadership positions. The vote had been on the slate last week before committee Chair Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) canceled it without comment.
The would-be DOE officials scheduled for committee votes Thursday were: Mark Wesley Menezes, a lobbyist for Berkshire Hathaway Energy tapped to be undersecretary for the Department of Energy; Paul Dabbar, of mega-bank J.P. Morgan, a prospective undersecretary for science; and David Jonas, the White House’s choice for DOE general counsel.
The DOE assistant secretary for environmental management would report to Menezes, if he is confirmed.
The Trump administration has yet to nominate anyone to be assistant secretary for environmental management, or administrator of DOE’s semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration.
