McCarthy And Moniz Prepare For Senate Scrutiny

[HuffingtonPost]

             

By Ayesha Rascoe and Valerie Volcovici                

WASHINGTON, April 8 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's  picks to lead U.S. energy and environmental policy face scrutiny  this week as Senate panels try to tease out details of the  administration's agenda, which had been maligned by Republicans  and some Democrats during Obama's first four years.                

Both nominees are Massachusetts natives with Washington  experience. Nuclear physicist Ernest Moniz, Obama's nominee for  energy secretary, will appear before the Senate Committee on  Energy and Natural Resources on Tuesday.                

On Thursday, Gina McCarthy, the Environmental Protection  Agency's top air quality official since 2009, will sit before  the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in her effort  to succeed Lisa Jackson as EPA administrator.                

After accusations of regulatory overreach at the EPA and  scandals surrounding the failure of Energy Department-backed  companies during Obama's first term, the pair - and McCarthy in  particular - are likely to face tough questioning.                

Republican Senator Roy Blunt placed a hold last month on  McCarthy's nomination over a spat involving a levee project in  his home state of Missouri.                

Until that hold is lifted, McCarthy would need 60 votes in  the 100-seat Senate to be confirmed in the post, instead of a  simple majority.                                

MONIZ' CONCERNS                

Moniz, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of  Technology, is well known in Washington after working at the  Department of Energy during the Clinton administration.                

The nation's shale oil and gas bonanza will likely be front  and center when he faces the Senate energy panel.                

Committee chairman Ron Wyden of Oregon has made confronting  the shale gas revolution a top priorities of the panel this  year, holding a hearing on the issue earlier this year and  scheduling a series of public forums for May.                

Moniz will almost certainly face questions on his views of  allowing U.S. companies to export large amounts of natural gas.   More than a dozen companies have requests pending with the  Energy Department for liquefied natural gas exports.                

While Wyden has raised concerns about allowing unlimited  exports, as a recent government-commissioned study supported,    his Republican counterpart, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, is pushing  for expediting the permit process.                

Lawmakers will likely also press Moniz on how he plans to  handle the department's controversial loan guarantee program for  energy development. Murkowski has called for reforming the  program after the high profile failure of solar panel maker  Solyndra during predecessor Steven Chu's four-year tenure at the  agency.                

Although Moniz will not have the billions of dollars in  stimulus funding to dole out as Chu did, he will oversee the  current loan portfolio and decide how to proceed with the still  active loan program that has offered conditional loan aid to two  nuclear projects.                

Moniz is also likely to face questions from Wyden about the  U.S. government-led, decades-long cleanup effort at the Hanford  Nuclear Reservation, a World War Two-era nuclear weapons site  leaking radioactive waste in Washington state.                

Wyden said last week that he will emphasize during the  confirmation hearing that the Department of Energy "needs a  viable plan to clean up" the site, which includes millions of  cubic yards of contaminated soil and debris and the construction  of a special treatment plant to immobilize waste.                                

EPA CLIMATE AGENDA ON TRIAL                

McCarthy, meanwhile, could be fully in the firing line at  her confirmation hearing. Republicans on the committee have been  pressing the nominee to disclose personal and agency emails  about its plans to regulate carbon emissions.                

Senator David Vitter of Louisiana, the lead Republican on  the panel, requested information from McCarthy as soon as her  name was floated for the EPA's top job.                

Vitter has said the EPA is needlessly opaque about its plans  to regulate carbon emissions from new and existing power plants,  and of secretly trying to impose a national carbon tax.                

"A lot of my questions will focus on openness and  transparency - how is she going to change the abysmal record we  have had so far with the Obama EPA," Vitter said in a radio  interview last week.                

Vitter also said McCarthy and the EPA have worked with  left-leaning environmental groups on crafting stringent carbon  regulations and hiding this from Congress.                

He sent a letter to McCarthy in March to ask her about the  intent of the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York  University School of Law to threaten litigation as a way to  "force a cap-and-trade system on the transportation fuels  sector" - a process known as "sue and settle."                

"Such a process is wholly unacceptable, especially  considering the administration's pattern of excluding states and  economically impacted individuals and businesses from important  rule-making decisions," Vitter wrote.                

Analysts said the candidates have enough experience with the  rough-and-tumble world of politics to win confirmation and set  about implementing Obama's vision of an "all of the above"  energy strategy that address climate change at a time of tight  budgets and a polarized Congress.                

"We're in a time where you need someone ... that really  knows how to navigate Washington because there are a lot of  things that are changing very quickly," said Ken Medlock, an  energy fellow at the Baker Institute at Rice University in  Houston. "If you put someone in there that's a novice, then  they're going to get eaten alive," Medlock said.       (Reporting by Valerie Volcovici and Ayesha Rascoe; editing by  Ros Krasny and Jackie Frank)

Via: HuffingtonPost