Feb. 2 (UPI) — Republicans in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Thursday suspended committee rules in order to advance Scott Pruitt’s nomination as head of the Environmental Protection Agency amid a Democrat boycott.
The committee’s approval now pushes his nomination to the full Senate floor for a vote. Republicans unanimously approved Oklahoma Attorney General Pruitt, President Donald Trump’s EPA secretary nominee, with an 11-0 vote.
Democrats boycotted the scheduled vote for a second day, which led Republican committee members to suspend rules requiring at least one Democrat be present for the vote to occur.
“It’s disappointing that they chose that course of action but we will not allow it to obstruct,” Environmental Public Works Committee Chairman Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., said prior to the vote. “Elections have consequences and the new president is entitled to put in place members to his agenda. Now it is time to set up a functioning government. That includes a functioning EPA.”
Democrats on Wednesday said they boycotted the vote because Pruitt had not answered questions they submitted to the nominee in writing.
“The committee Democrats are deeply concerned about the lack of thoroughness of Mr. Pruitt’s responses to our questions for the record,” Delaware Sen. Thomas R. Carper, the committee’s ranking Democrat, wrote in a letter to Barrasso. “We believe these inquiries, and our questions for the record, elicit information from the nominee that he possesses and that he should be able to provide to the committee … Failure on his part to do so is not only an affront; it also denies Democratic committee members, and all members of the Senate, information necessary to judge his fitness to assume the important role of leading the EPA.”
During his opening statement before the committee earlier this month, Pruitt said there is a link between human activity and climate change, adding that: “I do not believe climate change is a hoax.”
“Science tells us that the climate is changing and that human activity in some manner impacts that change,” Pruitt said. “The ability to measure with precision the degree and extent of that impact and what to do about it are subject to continuing debate and dialogue and well it should be.”
