Chairman John Barrasso called it “political theater,” but Democratic members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee prevented a vote on EPA nominee Scott Pruitt by boycotting a committee meeting. Barrasso said he would meet with the senior Democrat on the panel, Tom Carper, to find a way to move the nomination forward, said The Hill newspaper.
Democrats said they don’t object to a vote on Pruitt but he has not answered all of their questions. “Their specific problems revolve around Pruitt’s involvement in political groups that the Democrats labeled as “dark money” groups, and his office’s backlog in providing answers to an open records request for Pruitt’s communications with fossil fuel companies,” said The Hill. Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, a Republican member of the committee, said that Pruitt, now the attorney general of Oklahoma, has answered 1,000 more questions than any of the EPA nominees in the past three administrations.
Then in the minority, Republicans used a boycott in 2013 to prevent a vote by the Environment and Public Works Committee on Gina McCarthy, an Obama nominee for EPA administrator. “The GOP gave up on their boycott and let the panel vote go through once McCarthy agreed to certain conditions, like training employees on email use and establishing an expert panel on economic modeling,” said The Hill.
Meanwhile, USA Today said in an editorial that the Senate should reject Pruitt. “When the future of the planet is on the line, the choice of someone so openly hostile to the EPA’s mission is unacceptable,” said the editorial.