Top Obama administration officials will have to defend their agencies this week in a pair of committee hearings that will set the tone for how the Republican-led Congress plans to handle top White House environmental policies that GOP lawmakers say amount to executive overreach.
Interior Secretary Sally Jewell will face off Tuesday against Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski in a hearing on the agency’s budget. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy will appear Wednesday before House Energy and Commerce’s Energy and Power Subcommittee.
Observers are looking to see how Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, and Jewell will interact following recent administration actions that could hamstring oil and gas drilling in the Arctic, which Murkowski supports.
“This hearing is particularly important as a signal of where Sen. Murkowski is going to take the committee over the next two years,” said Matt Lee-Ashley, director of public lands with Left-leaning think tank the Center for American Progress.
The spat between Jewell and Murkowski dates to December 2013, when the Interior chief denied a land swap that would have allowed construction of a 10-mile road through Alaska’s Izembek National Wildlife Refuge. Murkowski, and the late Alaska Republican Sen. Ted Stevens before her, have fought to get a road built for emergency medical evacuations for a remote Aleutian community in King Cove.
Murkowski has fumed over the decision — she said Jewell didn’t offer much of a heads-up — but has contended it hasn’t affected their working relationship. Still, the budget process presents opportunities for Murkowski, who also heads the Senate Appropriations Committee subpanel that oversees Interior, to prod Jewell on the road by including a rider on the agency’s spending bill.
Murkowski said last week during Jewell’s visit to Alaska that she could use the spending process to reduce Interior’s budget. Jewell said that would cost federal jobs, but Murkowski retorted that it was more important to prevent Obama administration actions that have threatened oil and gas production in her state.
“But the land is the land, and that’s what I am here to protect, and the people of the state of Alaska and their right to access the lands,” Murkowski said, according to the Alaska Dispatch News. “This is what we need to be fighting for. I’m not going to be fighting for some short-term job for a bureaucrat.”
Last month, the White House proposed closing 12 million acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil production, which Alaska’s all-Republican congressional delegation said violated a 1980 deal to reserve a portion of the area for future energy development. It then took 9.8 million acres of Arctic waters off the market in its five-year draft offshore drilling plan, which would run from 2017 through 2022. And last week, the administration proposed the nation’s first-ever offshore Arctic drilling regulations.
“I’m just not seeing any recognition at all from the administration on Arctic priorities,” Murkowski told reporters recently.
Lee-Ashley thinks Jewell and Murkowski can work together on some Alaska-specific areas, such as cleaning up old, abandoned wells in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, developing oil and gas projects in Prudhoe Bay and speeding up permitting. Nationally, Murkowski has said she wants to pursue broad energy legislation that addresses infrastructure, supply and energy efficiency.
“I want to make something happen in these two years as I’m chairman,” Murkowski said.
That’s why the tenor of Tuesday’s hearing will be key, Lee-Ashley said.
“I think there’s an open question about whether the Energy and Natural Resources Committee will be attempting to fix problems and legislate,” Lee-Ashley said.
On the House side, the Wednesday EPA budget hearing will be McCarthy’s first date with the committee since the agency proposed its rules to limit carbon emissions from power plants and tighten the levels of ozone pollution from industrial sources. The proposed “Clean Waters of the U.S.” rule, an update to Clean Water Act regulations that has concerned agricultural groups, also will get attention.
“Certainly on greenhouse gas emissions there is a lot to talk about. We’re now post-comment. At this time last year we didn’t even know what the existing power plant proposal would look like,” said Ross Eisenberg, vice president of energy and natural resources policy with the National Association of Manufacturers.
The House panel’s Republicans are already baring their teeth, as they last week awarded the EPA’s “Clean Power Plan” with a “Worst Week in Washington” distinction. Several state utility commissioners and major electric power groups last week railed against the proposed power plant rule during a conference in Washington and a panel with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the nation’s top grid regulator.
“Is it just and is it legal? We don’t think so,” Ellen Nowak, a commissioner with the Wisconsin Public Service Commission, said last week at the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners meeting. They’re also worried about how the regulation would affect power supply.
The proposal aims to slash electricity-sector emissions 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. Opponents contend the rule will raise energy prices, and many say the EPA’s authority to call on emissions reductions outside of power plants themselves is dubious. More than half of states have filed public comments that in some way challenge the proposal.
McCarthy said at the utility regulators conference that the comments states have given on meeting near-term targets that begin in 2020 were a “big hint” that changes might be needed when the rule is finalized this summer.
But the proposed rule’s supporters say it will slow climate change and provide health benefits by taking older, dirtier power plants offline. Some have even called on the EPA to make the regulation more ambitious.
“Of course, EPA may need to adjust its proposal, taking into consideration feedback from the states, the utility industry and other stakeholders. But any adjustments need to strengthen, not weaken, the standards overall — including bringing us a meaningful reduction in carbon pollution,” Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, director of programs with the Natural Resources Defense Council, wrote last week after McCarthy’s comments.
Eisenberg said he is watching for signals on how committee members plan to address that regulation. Generally, House Republicans have attempted to include policy riders or starve agency spending to block implementation of regulations they don’t like. It now has a willing Senate partner in Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. But President Obama has vowed to reject spending bills that handcuff the power plant rule.
“The fact that it’s Energy and Commerce makes it somewhat interesting,” Eisenberg said. “There’s a new ranking member [Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J.] and a lot of new faces on the Republican and Democratic side. And we don’t know at this point what the legislative vehicle will be.”
