WASHINGTON - A sharply divided Senate committee Thursday approved the nomination of Gina McCarthy to serve as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.
The Environment and Public Works Committee voted to clear McCarthy by 10-8 along partisan lines, sending the nomination to the Senate floor, where Republicans are threatening to filibuster unless the EPA meets demands for additional information.
The Democrats on the panel, led by Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, were able to get a majority through the presence of Sen. Frank Lautenberg, the ailing New Jersey Democrat who has been largely absent from the Senate in recent weeks.
Republicans boycotted last week’s planned vote on McCarthy, saying that she had been unresponsive to a torrent of questions about EPA policies and information practices, including the use of secondary e-mail accounts by top officials. The agency’s inspector general is looking into that allegation, as well as a second charge by Republicans that conservative groups are discriminated against in Freedom of Information Act requests.
Sen. David Vitter, R-La., the ranking Republican on the committee, said the EPA’s acting administrator, Robert Perciasepe, had provided new assurances this week that the agency would cooperate with five Republican demands for information.
Although he and all the other Republicans on the environment committee voted against sending McCarthy’s nomination to the full Senate, he said he would not seek to filibuster her confirmation if Perciasepe followed through on his pledges.
“Should major additional progress be made in all of the five categories over the next two weeks,” Vitter said, “I will strongly support handling the McCarthy nomination on the Senate floor without a cloture vote or any 60-vote threshold. Should all of our requests in the five categories be granted, I will support the McCarthy nomination.”
Vitter and other Republicans say they are not blocking McCarthy because of any actions she has taken as head of the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, which has issued some pollution rules in the past four years that Republicans and industry officials characterize as job-killers. They say they seek only to open EPA files to additional scrutiny, including release of health data supporting some air-quality regulations.
Medical privacy rules forbid release of any information that could allow individuals to be identified.
“We’re not asking this EPA to change its policy and views,” Vitter said. “We’re asking for openness and transparency as required by law.”
Boxer said she was “stunned” at what she called Republican obstructionism. “I have never seen a nomination handled this way,” she said.“I’m so anxious to promote this woman. I think she’s so qualified.”
Another Senate panel Thursday approved the nomination of Thomas Perez to be labor secretary, advancing President Barack Obama’s pick to succeed Hilda Solis as the nation’s top labor-law enforcer to the full Senate, where Republican opposition is building.
The Democratic-led Senate Health and Labor Committee approved Perez in a 12-10 party-line vote.
Republicans have criticized Perez, who would be the only Hispanic in Obama’s second-term Cabinet so far, for what they say are ideological decisions he made as head of the Justice Department’s civil-rights division. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky in a floor speech last week said he will oppose Perez, who he said is willing “to bend or ignore the law” in pursuit of “far-left ideology.”
Perez, a former Maryland secretary of labor, has clashed with Republicans over his handling of two whistle-blower lawsuits that the department declined to pursue. A Republican-led House panel has held hearings this month on the legal cases, with Democrats decrying what they said was a partisan effort to derail Perez’s selection.
Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, the committee’s Democratic chairman, defended Perez, arguing that he did nothing unethical and offered “unprecedented levels of disclosure” on the cases. He said Perez’s extensive experience in government shows he would be an effective labor secretary.
Meanwhile, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, said he will hold confirmation hearings Thursday for commerce secretary nominee Penny Pritzker, and a Wednesday hearing for Anthony Foxx, Obama’s nominee for transportation secretary. He has yet to set a date for a hearing on the nomination of Tom Wheeler to lead the Federal Communications Commission.
Also Thursday, physicist Ernest Moniz won unanimous Senate confirmation Thursday to be the nation’s new energy secretary.
Moniz, 68, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, replaces Steven Chu, who was energy secretary in Obama’s first term. Moniz was an energy undersecretary in the Bill Clinton administration.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, called Moniz “solution-oriented” and said he is “smart about energy policy and savvy about Energy Department operations.”
Obama hailed Moniz as “a world-class scientist with expertise in a range of energy sources and a leader with a proven record of bringing prominent thinkers and innovators together to advance new energy solutions.” Information for this article was contributed by John M. Broder of The New York Times; by Laura Litvan of Bloomberg News; and by Matthew Daly of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 05/17/2013