Wheeler Likely to Breeze Through Senate

the permanent head of the EPA. Right now, he's serving in an acting capacity. But first he's got to get through the Senate, and that is where we are. We are sitting right outside the Senate chamber, and I'm joined by Bloomberg Environment's congressional correspondent, Dean Scott. Dean, how are

you doing? Great? Good to be here. Thank you for joining us so, Dean, I'm hearing that Andrew Wheeler will likely not have a lot of trouble getting out of Committee when he goes up for a vote there, and then getting out of the Senate floor when his nomination comes there. What's going to be happening with Wheeler's nomination, Well, first, up.

You're right. We have a Environment Committee business meeting where they essentially vote and are expected to vote him out, probably along a party line vote, as happened last year when he was eventually confirmed the Senate as the deputy. So he's been working as an acting EPA administrator since July of last year. So we expect this to be the first step, probably the easier step for mister Wheeler

on his journey to become Senate confirmed EPA administrator. And then after he gets out of the Committee, he'll go to the Senate floor, which is right behind us where we sit right now, and it sounds like he probably won't have a lot of trouble there either. I think the time is on the Republican side, and what I mean by that is the sooner they can get Andrew Wheeler confirmed as EPA administrator, the better for him. He

has a very strong support on the Republican side. He has very little support from Democrats, but with Republicans controlling the chamber over here fifty three forty seven, his supporters have a little leeway to lose a vote if they need to, and they'll probably pick up at least one Democrat. We'll get to that in a second. But one of the things we should just briefly mention is that Republicans only need fifty one I guess actually fifty votes to

confirm him. This is not something that Democrats can filibuster. So the sixty vote threshold that you hear about a lot doesn't really apply here. That's right, And we've seen a couple nominees from President Trump who were actually approved by fifty votes fifty votes plus in some cases by the vice president, and so he has a little margin

for a little error here. The issue I think will be it's something that I've talked to a couple Republican senators this week about is the optics of having an EPA administrator who could possibly be confirmed by only Republican senators, which would be the first time in the history of the agency. So Democrats can't really stop Wheeler. It sounds like, will they try to delay his nomination? Will they do anything, you know, take any parliamentary measures to try to make

it harder on Republicans to confirm him. All committee have some procedures for at least a slight delay. This is happening actually over an Attorney general confirmation battle. In judiciary where you can have a week or two of ripening of a nominee even after they clear the committee. Beyond that, there's some small I would call them weaponry or tactics that you can use. But I fully expect, barring some unforeseen circumstances other legislation, government shut down, we should be

seeing Wheeler on the Senate floor sometime in February. So you mentioned that this could be unusual and that Wheeler could be confirmed with only Republican votes. You may get one Democratic vote. What's going on with who's the Democrat that might vote vote for him? And what would be the significance of that if he is confirmed with just Republicans.

So just setting the scene from last year, we had three Democrats that actually voted for a Wheeler the last time when he was on the floor for deputy, and those were Senators don Lee and Hidekamp and Senator Mansion from West Virginia. Which you say, of the three of those, two of those senators are not here any longer, that's right.

So Senators Donn Lee and Hydekamp were defeated, so you assume that their two Republican successors will of course vote for mister Wheeler, and I would assume the betting money right now is that Senator Manchin, while not assured, will probably still vote for mister Wheeler. So a vote that's at least close to the fifty three forty five vote, which is what the vote was last year to confirm mister Wheeler looks about right barring what some of us have begun to talk about, which is a little bit

of a publican concern around the edges on some policy issues. So, you know, we talked about how this could be a really really almost totally party line vote. Maybe in a officially party line vote. That sounds like it's pretty unusual for the head of the EPA, especially since you know a lot of people have been saying that that Andrew Wheeler is much less divisive, much less partisan than his predecessor,

Scott Pruitt. Why do you think there's still this sort of divide over who leads the EPA, this partisan divide. I think it's a couple of things. One is, there's still a lot of democratic anger over Merrick Garland and in the Senate Majority Leader McConnell's decision to not move forward on that Obama nomination to the Supreme Court. That's number one. That anger still ripples through confirmation battles today, and also the move away from a sixty vote threshold

for executive branch nominations. Now you need essentially a simple majority. We've seen people confirmed over here, by the way, forty nine to forty eight. So as long as you have essentially more than your opposition, you can confirm someone. Senate Democrats really were angered over that move. They had some reason to be, although they did make a similar change on a more moderate change for some nominations a smaller set of nominations under President Obama, So that sort of

anger is still palpable. In the Senate, there's not much reason for the Democratic minority to support Wheeler, even though he was a longtime aid in the Senate Environment Committee. Many of them are very familiar with him. He is has much better relationships with Democrats and Republicans than his predecessor, Scott Pruitt. Yeah, let's briefly sort of get into that

a little bit. It seems like Wheeler and prove It, at least on the surface, are very very different, different in their demeanor, different in their sort of profile in Washington. Can you talk a little bit about the you know, elaborate on the ways that they are different and maybe

some ways that they're similar. One way is mister Wheeler has made some effort to reach out to EPA career employees his emails when the for example, when the last shutdown and it talked about the importance of career EPA employees. He has done that at the urging of some Democrats in the Senate and some on his own, which is smart politics. He's not seen as the divisive figure, refusing essentially to budge on even being communicative to Senate Democrats.

On policy issues, You're not going to see Wheeler sort of criticize the deep state. You know, that's not a

phrase you'll probably hear from him. Yes, and also, as has been reported over a lot over the last year, mister Prewitt, his Wheeler's predecessor, had a lot of run ins with ethical concerns, and mister Wheelers has stayed really far away from that, has just basically quietly got down to business, which on policy issues, whether it's rolling back EPA climate regulations or revamping how EPA does chemical reviews, which some people see as a slow down of those reviews.

Mister Wheeler is in effect doing much of the work we might have expected mister Prewitt to do just more quietly, all right, and then finally wrapping it up. Let's sort of handicap this, you know, this is sort of a favorite pastime of reporters up here on the Capitol Hill. It sounds like you're saying he's going to get between fifty three and fifty four votes in favor of his nomination when he gets to the floor. Is is that

where you're putting it? Is there any and what are the odds that he gets either more than fifty four or less than fifty three? I think for me, one question I have is for Kirsten Cinemon, the successor to Senator Flake, the Democrat that took a Republican this won't affect the vote much because because she would be voting

if she votes yes. Senator Flake also voted yes. But that said, there are some interesting there's some interesting talk in the background about some Republican concerns about mister Wheeler, about some chemical issues with p foss and some other other chemicals that are been raised as human health concerns. Some of that I think we're going to see a little bit of tugging back and forth over that some of those Republicans are looking at re election campaigns in

twenty twenty, including Corey Gardner in Colorado. But at the end of the day, I would be really surprised two things, that Wheeler does not get a single Democratic vote, because I think Senator Manchin is most likely going to be a yes. So I still think we're going to see a vote very close to the fifty three forty five vote that mister Wheeler got last year for the deputy job. All right, Well, that was Dean Scott, Bloomberg Environment's Capitol

Hill correspondent. For more of his reporting from the Capitol, go to News dot Bloomberg, Environment dot com, that's news Bloomberg, Environment dot com and Press. Revillion was produced by myself and Jessica Coomes. Our editor is Marissa Horn, our audio engineer is Nicholas Anzelada, and the music for this episode is a message by Jazzarre. Thanks for listening.