President Trump’s pick for Air Force secretary is now headed to the full Senate after being approved by the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The committee voted 22-5 to recommend the nomination of Heather Wilson, a former congresswoman and Air Force veteran, to be the service’s top civilian, according to a committee source. No floor vote had been scheduled as of Wednesday afternoon.
The committee held a hearing on Wilson’s nomination last week.
“Let’s hope we get a bunch more [nominees] … she’s well qualified,” said Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz.
Republicans have been eager to get Wilson confirmed, as the Trump administration has been slow to fill key positions at the Pentagon. But Democrats hammered Wilson over $450,000 in past payments from the country’s contractor-run nuclear labs.
The inspector general for the Department of Energy issued a report in 2013 that found four of its contractor-run nuclear labs made $450,000 worth of payments to a company owned by Wilson between 2009 and 2011.
Due to a lack of proper documentation, the nature and details of the work provided by Heather Wilson and Company to the laboratories were unclear, the IG found. Wilson said she was paid for at least 50 hours of consulting work each month and complied with her contracts with the laboratories.
Democrats seized on the payments during the committee confirmation hearing.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said that Wilson did not fully explain the findings and did not show she would compel better contracting documentation as Air Force secretary.
“I have very strong reservations about her responses to me on forms that she submitted in connection to her contracting work, basically blank sheets,” Blumenthal said.
Wilson has been the president of South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, a university that provides engineering and science degrees, since 2013.
She managed to clear initial ethics hurdles that derailed past nominations of Army and Navy secretaries.
As part of her ethics agreement, Wilson would quit the university and step down as a board member from Raven Industries, which produces agricultural products, aerostats and film sheeting, and Peabody Energy, a coal and mining company.
She would also divest Defense Department contractor stocks including Raytheon, Husky Energy, Honeywell International and IBM, according to documents filed with the Defense Department office of general counsel.
