(Credit: NY Times)

Gina McCarthy finally got a vote.

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee held a hearing yesterday to vote on McCarthy’s nomination to be the next EPA Administrator. This came after a week of obstruction from the Republican members of the committee, who boycotted the scheduled vote last week.

As one of the most highly-qualified nominees to lead the Environmental Protection Agency in its history, McCarthy has understandably won plaudits from Republicans like Senator James Inhofe and energy industry titans like American Electric Power. She has been dubbed the “green quarterback” in President Obama’s administration as well as former Governor Mitt Romney’s. Indeed, McCarthy was approved by the full Senate in 2009 for her current position leading the Office of Air and Radiation by a voice vote.

Carol Browner, Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, expressed hope that McCarthy would receive a similar vote before the full Senate:

I commend the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works for approving the nomination of Gina McCarthy. Not only is she a seasoned civil servant with decades of experience, she is clearly a bipartisan nominee, having worked as an environmental adviser for both Republican and Democratic governors. The Senate already confirmed her once for her current role at the EPA, and I hope they move forward expeditiously with her current confirmation so that she can continue her lifelong work of protecting children and families from air pollution and other hazards.

The ranking member of the committee, Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), outlined five “requests” prior to last week’s scheduled vote, and cited dissatisfaction with EPA’s responsiveness to those five requests as the reason all committee Republicans boycotted last week’s vote. These five questions mainly involve transparency issues: two have been fully satisfied and are moot at this point. In fact, each have been answered, and the reasonable requests fulfilled.

What are the points of contention? The only things EPA will likely not do is:

• release the full data behind air pollution studies that reveal personal medical information — EPA has released the rest of the data
• adopt an industry-backed “cost-benefit” analysis for its regulations in place of several comprehensive cost-benefit analyses that take environmental and health factors into account
• give corporations and industry parties the right to join all EPA settlement talks in lawsuits against the agency for violating the law as “intervenors,” allowing industries that pollute illegally sit in on talks about the response to their own illegal activities

Requests to do any of these things are far beyond the scope of a confirmation vote. EPA and Gina McCarthy have acquiesced to all reasonable demands from Senate Republicans. Vitter essentially said so during yesterday’s hearing:

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On May 9, Senator Vitter (R-LA) led seven fellow Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in a boycott of the committee vote to confirm Ms. Gina McCarthy as the next Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Ms. McCarthy has responded to an unprecedented 1,079 questions from Committee Republicans, but Senator Vitter did not like the answers to some of these questions.

Senator Vitter has asserted that EPA has “stonewalled on four of the five categories” of demands that Vitter characterizes as “transparency”-related. Closer examination reveals, however, that Senator Vitter’s outstanding demands have nothing to do with transparency, but rather with ideology. In reality, Senator Vitter is abusing the nomination process to browbeat EPA to change its policies in a way that will undermine the agency’s ability to protect public health and the environment.

Vitter’s five demands show what’s really going on:

Vitter Demand #1: Require EPA to draft guidance limiting official business to official email accounts and improving the agency’s response to Freedom of Information Act requests.

Status: EPA has done this and Senator Vitter has acknowledged as much.

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Vitter Demand #2: That Ms. McCarthy’s private email accounts be re-reviewed, despite her testimony that she did so and does not use personal email accounts to conduct official EPA business.

Status: Ms. McCarthy reviewed her email accounts and testified before the committee in April regarding her practices relating to personal and official email. Partisan criticism of the prior EPA Administrator’s emails have nothing to do with Ms. McCarthy. Senators did not object under prior Republican administrations when political officials had more than one official email account. But Ms. McCarthy does not even follow that practice. Senator Vitter’s criticism is partisan and an excuse for obstruction.

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Vitter Demand #3: Provide Senators with underlying data from air pollution studies dating to 1993 regarding the health impacts of particulate matter (or soot) pollution, despite the data’s inclusion of personally identifiable medical information of patients involved in the studies.

Status: EPA has provided Senators with data in its possession from those studies that does not contain personally identifiable medical information. The agency has provided information about how the studies were conducted, contacted many of the researchers involved, and offered to meet with Senate staff on a number of occasions.

Most important, however, is the reason Republicans on the committee demand this data. Polluter lobbyists have attacked this data for years because the studies (along with countless other studies over the years) found an association between soot pollution and mortality. The Bush administration, Health Effects Institute and numerous medical researchers and organizations globally have reaffirmed that link. Soot pollution is emitted by power plants, refineries, and chemical plants. House Republicans in both the 112th and 113th Congress have tried and failed to discredit this science in an effort to dismantle life-saving clean air standards EPA issues that reduce soot pollution. Vitter and his colleagues here are attempting to advance ideological goals through the confirmation process that they are unable to institute through legislation.

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Vitter Demand #4: EPA should undertake “whole economy” cost-benefit analysis of health standards using a non-peer reviewed, industry-pushed model.

Status: EPA has thoroughly outlined to the committee the different cost-benefit analyses the agency uses, including analysis beyond regulated sectors. The particular model Vitter and his colleagues demand EPA use is an industry-backed, non-peer reviewed economic model that EPA has said is not suited for the demanded purpose. Again, prior extreme legislation (such as the “TRAIN” Act in the House) pushed this idea. Vitter’s demand is designed to lead to paralysis by analysis – crippling EPA with red tape and biasing EPA processes against health safeguards and toward industry-desired outcomes.

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Vitter Demand #5: In lawsuits against the agency for violating the law, the Senators demand that non-party “intervenors” be given the right to participate in all settlement negotiations. Senator Vitter asked further that EPA publish notices the agency receives from outside parties conveying the intent to sue EPA when it fails to meet a mandatory statutory duty.

Status: EPA has agreed to publish all notices it receives from outside parties conveying an intent to sue. The Senators’ demands relating to non-party interventions are again part of an ideological agenda designed to thwart law enforcement of health safeguards. These demands parrot bills introduced in both the House and the Senate that give corporations and industry parties the right to join all EPA settlement talks. This means industries that pollute illegally would be guaranteed a right to try to limit the response to their own illegal activities.

By John Walke, Clean Air Director, Natural Resources Defense Council

In a desperate attempt to force Keystone XL, three Senators are threatening access to a vital economic and national security safeguard, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve

by Daniel J. Weiss

Republican Congressional leaders have failed to force President Obama to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. But that’s not stopping them from trying over and over again, taking hostages in the process.

First they used the payroll tax cut extension as a vehicle to force a decision on the pipeline in sixty days, even before the final route was identified. President Obama was forced to disapprove the permit because there was no time to assess its potential pollution.

This week, several senators took a different hostage: our emergency oil supply.  On February 13, Senators David Vitter (R-LA), John Hoevan (R-ND), and Richard Lugar (R-IN) introduced the Strategic Petroleum Supplies Act, S. 2100 that would prevent President Obama from selling oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve unless Keystone is approved:

“the Administration shall not authorize a sale of petroleum products from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve… until the date on which all permits necessary … for the Keystone XL pipeline project application filed on September 19, 2008 (including amendments) have been issued.”

In other words, unless the president approves Keystone, he cannot sell our emergency oil — even if Iran causes an oil supply disruption in the Strait of Hormuz, a hurricane or other disaster disables oil production or refining facilities, or any other type of event causes gasoline prices to soar above $4 per gallon.  If any of these events happen, middle class Americans would pay significantly higher gasoline pump prices, giving billions of dollars more to big oil companies that made record profits last year.

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Dr. Scott Doney, who will not be NOAA's chief scientist

Doney’s nomination, which enjoyed bipartisan support, was blocked beginning more than a year ago by Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), who demanded that Obama administration officials testify before Congress on the Interior Department’s decision to halt deepwater drilling in the wake of the BP PLC oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

A Vitter spokesman told E&E News that “Vitter had no specific objections to Doney but had significant concerns with the administration’s handling of Gulf drilling.”

The NOAA chief scientist position has been vacant for more than a decade, unfilled by either the George W. Bush or Barack Obama administrations.

Doney is a top expert on how the global carbon cycle and ocean ecology respond to natural and human-driven climate change, including ocean acidification from the burning of fossil fuels.

Last week, the White House announced the withdrawal of the nomination of Rebecca Wodder to be Interior’s assistant secretary for fish, wildlife, and parks, after failing to lift blocks from Vitter and Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK).

Rebecca Wodder

They try to say it doesn’t directly affect the policy with hydraulic fracturing, and technically that’s right. But the fact that you come in as an activist with an extreme position is just more of the same in the administration, in every little corner of government.

Vitter had vowed he would block her confirmation unless Interior issued a blanket extension of all Gulf of Mexico drilling leases, Greenwire reports. The extension was not issued.

Wodder will work as an adviser at the department.

“Based on her extensive experience and expertise, the Secretary has asked her to serve as a senior adviser, working primarily on conservation issues and the America’s Great Outdoors initiative,” said Interior spokesman Adam Fetcher.