releases: 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
Data license: MIT · Data source: dwillis/congress-press
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| url | title | date | year | month | party | chamber | state | member_name | bioguide_id | domain | scraper | source | date_source | text | has_text | collected_at | updated_at |
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| 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 | legacy | Inhofe Opening Statement at EPW Hearing on the Nominations of Rhea Suh, Victoria Baecher Wassmer, Roy K.J. Williams, and Thomas A. Burke Tuesday, December 17, 2013 Washington, D.C. – U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), senior member of the Environment Public Works (EPW) Committee, today provided the following opening statement the full committee hearing entitled, “Hearing 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” As prepared for delivery: This is the first nominations hearing we’ve 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’s ability to shine a light on rulemaking decisions that occur behind closed doors at EPA and the White House. Just this last Saturday, The Washington post confirmed my claim that “The White House systematically delayed enacting a series of rules on the environment, worker safety and health care to prevent them from becoming points of contention before the 2012 election” As 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. Nominations have long been one of the primary means by which this Committee – especially those in the minority – can provide a check on this rulemaking bureaucracy. However, our oversight leverage in this Committee has now been completely diminished, thus allowing this flexible decision making process of the Administration to continue to operate in secret without any Congressional oversight–And Democrats are fully aware of this. 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. In fact, the entire Democrat side of the Committee boycotted Gov. Leavitt’s 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’ answers much more difficult. Nevertheless, the Democrats stone-walled the process, and it worked. Senator Carper eventually got the information he requested. I think this is important to remember because President Obama actually mentioned Gina McCarthy’s confirmation process in his remarks supporting the Democrats’ move to end a sixty vote threshold on nominations. Our rationale behind delaying McCarthy’s 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. In 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. In protest, I put a blanket hold on all Presidential nominations. In turn, President Clinton formally submitted the change to the Senate. We then held the hearing, confirmed Perciasepe to the Air Office, and moved along. In this case, our hold was used to protect the integrity of the Senate’s constitutional role to provide advice and consent to the President’s nominations. Now that the rules have been changed, exercising this kind of authority will be impossible. This should be a real concern. When I was Chairman of this Committee, one person I remember working with was H. Dale Hall, who served as President’ Bush’s Director of the Fish and Wildlife Service. 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. Much 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. 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. That is now all lost. Because the Democrats have taken away the super majority, our ability to exercise effective oversight – either in the majority or minority –is gone-- This should be concerning to us all. . I appreciate the time I was able to spend with you Mr. Williams, discussing the valuable work that EDA is responsible for in Oklahoma. I won’t have any questions for you, but I look forward to working with you one you are confirmed. I also would like to thank Ms. Suh for coming to my office. I appreciated our very frank discussion on the decisions you will be responsible for that could negatively impact domestic energy independence—something we will get to in the Q&As. ### | 1 | 2026-03-30T12:14:52Z | 2026-03-30T12:14:52Z |