Confirming All of the Presidents Men

Environmental Protection Agency. And I'm here with BNA reporter Brian Dabs. Brian, how's it going? Doing well? Sir? Thank you? Now, Brian, where are we on Capitol Hill? What's what location are we at right now? David, We're just a few feed from the hallowed grounds of the Senate Floor, the greatest deliverative body in the world. This will be the setting for confirmation votes on the whole range of President Donald

Trump's cabinet nominations. That's right, And so let's start off with Scott Pruett, the Attorney General of Oklahoma, who President Trump is nominated to head the e PA. He testified before a Senate committee earlier. You were covering this hearing. You know, did he break with the president with the person who nominated him or did he break with his prior record at all during these confirmation hearings. He did break with the president in saying that climate change explicitly

is not a hoax. He said that human activity contributes to climate change quote in some manner. He also said that his opinion on climate change is quote immaterial. And this really comports with his preference and his pledge to simply be an implementer of the law and to not have an over zealous, ambitious EPA rather strict, strictly implement

the laws on the books. He had one departure from his kind of track record as Oklahoma Attorney General in particular, and that was his vow to uphold in the most ambitious manner possible the EPA's renewable fuel standard. The oil industry despises this rule for the most part. Well, you know, these hearings and testimony are all well and good, but in a few weeks Pruitz nomination is going to go into the room that's just behind us, the Senate Chamber, and he's going to need fifty votes if he wants

to actually become the EPA administrator. Can he get those fifty votes? Brian Well Initially, it appears as though Republican support for PREUD is lockste Republicans currently have fifty two seats in the Senate, and that would indicate that his path to confirmation is essentially greased. First, however, he does need to get through committee. There's some kind of interesting

scenarios that could surface. Senate Democrats are calling on Jeff's Sessions to recuse himself from votes on other cabinet nominees. Senator Sessions is a member of the EPW Committee. Right now, the breakdown on committee is eleven to ten. And by the way, right now we have Shelley Moore Capito walking by us, who is a Republican member of the committee.

So in terms of the prognosis, a recusal from Senator Jeff Sessions would mean that the committee would be deadlocked, presuming which is an accurate presumption at this point, that Democrats will be locked up in opposition. So that would mean there's a ten vote on committee, the nomination would not advance. However, the chairman of the committee still has the option of advancing the nomination to the floor without

an actual affirmative vote. That's interesting. I didn't realize it was that tight in the committee and that he might have a little trouble evening it making it to the Senate floor. But you mentioned that this is assuming that all the Democrats vote against him, all the Republicans vote for him. Are there any senators who are thinking about crossing party lines, either Republicans who are thinking about voting

against him or Democrats who may be supporting Pruit. It's shaping up to be essentially a party line vote on the floor. Shouldn't make it there with the exception of at least one, possibly several Democratic defections. Senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia, who's up for re election in twenty eighteen, has indicated that he looks pretty positively upon the nomination of Scott through it. Other senators in that kind of camp are Heidi high Camp, Claire mccaskele. So essentially his

nomination is solid. Should have reached the sound floor. That's interesting. So it sounds like the margin between the parties now is pretty tight. But Republicans, I think are it looks like they're counting on a few Democrats to cross the aisle and join ranks and vote for Pruit. So let's assume that he is confirmed, and he does become the next administrator of the EPA. The EPA, of course, is

not the only federal agency that affects the environment. There's also the Department of Interior, the Department of Energy, and even the Department of State, which deals with the international climate and other agreements. So let's talk about those nominees, Ryan Zink, Rick Perry, and Rex Tillerson. These are the nominees that Trump has chosen to lead these agencies, respectively. Very briefly, will these three nominees be confirmed? Are there

any snags that you think they will hit? These three nominees appear a position to be confirmed within the coming days, at minimum, maybe weeks. It's very hard to determine. Rex Tillerson snuck out of committee yesterday in an eleven to ten party line vote. Now, Ryan Zink and Rick Perry had originally been scheduled to receive a vote to advance them out of committee today. That was postponed by the chair of that committee, Senator Lisa Rakowski, for undeclared reasons.

Both of those nominees have come under less fire than the Tillerson and the PRUAD nominations, and right now we have the third ranking senator, Republican, strolling by Senator John Thune from South Dakota. There he went, well, the last thing I wanted to bring up was was just, you know, taking a step back and thinking about the political environment more broadly. You have preu It, you have Perry, you have Zinki, and even Tillerson, who looks like they'll all

be pretty comfortably confirmed. Maybe you know, some of these votes will be a little bit closer than you would have expected, but it sounds like none of them are really in danger of being knocked out. What does that say about the environmental movement in the Senate? You know, the Democrats who are very passionate about environmental issues. I'm thinking of Sheldon Whitehouse Ben Cardon. What does that say about their you know clout right now in the Senate?

History has come, History has come to kind of bite the Democrats right now. And with regards to nominations, in twenty thirteen, Harry Reid famously invoked the nuclear Option, which allows which essentially is a change of Senate rules, and it allows the Senate to approve cabinet level nominations and other nominations such as judicial nominations. With only a simple majority,

which the Republicans currently have in the Chamber. Therefore, there's virtually no need for Democrats to endorse these nominees in

order to ultimately approve them. I see. So that's a good point that because of the nuclear option, which was implemented by Democrats when they were in the majority, they may still be able to block some environmental legislation that they oppose, but in terms of the cabinet officials who deal with these environmental issues and they're opposed to, they really have no real recourse to block them from being confirmed. It sounds like that's accurate. That was Brian Dab's coming

to you from Capitol Hill. To read the latest coverage of the Trump administration, visit our website at BNA dot com. Parts Pabillion was produced by myself this week with help from Jessica Coombs and Rachel Daegel. The music tracks for Parts Rebellion are by Jazaar. They were used under creative Comments attributions, share Like license. More can be found at Better with Music dot com.