{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.inhofe.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/inhofe-opening-statement-at-epw-hearing-on-the-nominations-of-rhea-suh-victoria-baecher-wassmer-roy-kj-williams-and-thomas-a-burke", "Inhofe Opening Statement at EPW Hearing on the Nominations of Rhea Suh, Victoria Baecher Wassmer, Roy K.J. Williams, and Thomas A. Burke", "2013-12-17", "2013", "2013-12", "Republican", "House", "OK", "James Inhofe", "I000024", "www.inhofe.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "Inhofe Opening Statement at EPW Hearing on the Nominations of Rhea Suh, Victoria Baecher Wassmer, Roy K.J. Williams, and Thomas A. Burke\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tTuesday, December 17, 2013\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\tWashington, D.C. \u2013 U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), senior member of the Environment Public Works\u00a0(EPW)\u00a0Committee, today provided the following opening statement the full committee hearing entitled, \u201cHearing on the Nominations of Rhea Sun Suh to be Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks of the U.S. Department of the Interior, Victoria Baecher Wassmer to be Chief Financial Officer of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Roy K.J. Williams to be Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development of the U.S. Department of Commerce, and Thomas A. Burke to be Assistant Administrator for Research and Development of the EPA\u201d\r\nAs prepared for delivery:\r\nThis is the first nominations hearing we\u2019ve had since the Democrats exercised the nuclear option on nominations, and I think we need to take a few minutes to talk about how these actions have eviscerated this Committee\u2019s ability to shine a light on rulemaking decisions that occur behind closed doors at EPA and the White House.\r\nJust this last Saturday, The Washington post confirmed my claim that \u201cThe White House systematically delayed enacting a series of rules\u00a0on the environment, worker safety and health care to prevent them from becoming points of contention before the 2012 election\u201d\r\nAs Ranking Member, I issued a report on Oct. 18, 2012 warning that President and his team of handpicked nominees will intentionally manipulate the rulemaking process to avoid the political consequences, preventing the revelation of the true economic pain.\r\nNominations have long been one of the primary means by which this Committee \u2013 especially those in the minority \u2013 can provide a check on this rulemaking bureaucracy.\r\nHowever, our oversight leverage in this Committee has now been completely diminished,\u00a0 thus allowing this flexible decision making process of the Administration to continue to operate in secret without any Congressional oversight\u2013And Democrats are fully aware of this.\u00a0 Senator Carper, my friend from Delaware, used the nomination of Governor Mike Leavitt to head the EPA to extract data on the 4P bill he was working on with Senator Jeffords.\r\nIn fact, the entire Democrat side of the Committee boycotted Gov. Leavitt\u2019s confirmation hearing because they were not satisfied with his answers to their 75 pre- hearing questions, never mind the fact that he did not work at EPA prior to becoming Administrator, making his access to their questions\u2019 answers much more difficult.\r\nNevertheless, the Democrats stone-walled the process, and it worked.\u00a0 Senator Carper eventually got the information he requested.\r\nI think this is important to remember because President Obama actually mentioned Gina McCarthy\u2019s confirmation process in his remarks supporting the Democrats\u2019 move to end a sixty vote threshold on nominations.\u00a0 Our rationale behind delaying McCarthy\u2019s consideration was a lack of responsiveness toward our requests for information, the most important of which was the data underlying the studies EPA uses to justify its costly regulations.\u00a0\r\nIn another example, around the time I was first elected to the Senate in 1994, President Clinton tried to move Bob Perciasepe from head of the Office of Water to head the Office of Air without going through the requisite confirmation process.\r\nIn protest, I put a blanket hold on all Presidential nominations.\u00a0 In turn, President Clinton formally submitted the change to the Senate.\u00a0 We then held the hearing, confirmed Perciasepe to the Air Office, and moved along.\r\nIn this case, our hold was used to protect the integrity of the Senate\u2019s constitutional role to provide advice and consent to the President\u2019s nominations.\u00a0 Now that the rules have been changed, exercising this kind of authority will be impossible.\r\nThis should be a real concern.\u00a0 When I was Chairman of this Committee, one person I remember working with was H. Dale Hall, who served as President\u2019 Bush\u2019s Director of the Fish and Wildlife Service.\u00a0 Prior to his nomination being made official, the Fish and Wildlife Service provided us with reams of data that detailed the work they were doing around the country.\r\nMuch of this data was of particular concern to members of the Committee, and it gave us a captive audience with the Service that we might not otherwise have had.\u00a0 Because the Committee was actively engaged and invested in the nominations process, we had a much more cooperative relationship with the Administration and received a lot of the information we needed.\r\nThat is now all lost.\u00a0 Because the Democrats have taken away the super majority, our ability to exercise effective oversight \u2013 either in the majority or minority \u2013is gone-- This should be concerning to us all. .\r\nI appreciate the time I was able to spend with you Mr. Williams, discussing the valuable work that EDA is responsible for in Oklahoma.\u00a0 I won\u2019t have any questions for you, but I look forward to working with you one you are confirmed.\u00a0\r\nI also would like to thank Ms. Suh for coming to my office.\u00a0\u00a0 I appreciated our very frank discussion on the decisions you will be responsible for that could negatively impact domestic energy independence\u2014something we will get to in the Q&As.\r\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.inhofe.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/inhofe-opening-statement-at-epw-hearing-on-the-nominations-of-rhea-suh-victoria-baecher-wassmer-roy-kj-williams-and-thomas-a-burke"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.7561156526207924, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}