Brouillette Confirmation Heralds Tide of New Senate Action on DOE Nominees

Once and future Energy Department hand Dan Brouillette was confirmed as the agency’s next deputy secretary Thursday after a bipartisan 79-17 vote in the U.S. Senate.

The floodgates opened Thursday after Brouillette’s confirmation, as the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee subsequently voted that day to send two more senior DOE leadership nominees to the floor.

Brouillette most recently worked for over a decade as a lobbyist for insurance giant United Services Automobile Association in San Antonio, Texas. From 2001 to 2003, Brouillette was DOE’s assistant secretary for congressional and intergovernmental affairs. He left the agency in 2003 for Capitol Hill, where he was staff director for the House Energy and Commerce Committee that has jurisdiction over DOE. Brouillette’s time on the Hill lasted just a year, and he has been in industry ever since.

The Energy Department had no immediate comment on Brouillette’s confirmation Thursday.

The two would-be DOE’ers are: Mark Wesley Menezes, a lobbyist for Berkshire Hathaway Energy tapped to be undersecretary for the Department of Energy; and Paul Dabbar, of mega-bank J.P. Morgan, a prospective undersecretary for science. They now require a confirmation vote on the Senate floor that had not been scheduled at deadline Friday for Weapons Complex Monitor.

David Jonas, the White House’s choice for DOE general counsel, had his confirmation hearing along with Menezes and Dabbar on July 20, but did not get a vote during Thursday’s meeting. A Senate aide said action on Jonas’ nomination was delayed.

Menezes would be in charge of the part of DOE that includes legacy nuclear cleanup programs managed by the agency’s Office of Environmental Management. In the department’s current organizational hierarchy, the assistant secretary for environmental management reports directly to the undersecretary office Menezes would occupy if confirmed.

Meanwhile, the Donald Trump administration had yet at deadline Friday to nominate anyone to be assistant secretary for environmental management, or undersecretary for nuclear security: the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration.

The Senate adjourned Thursday for its traditional August recess but will convene pro forma sessions over the break that will preclude Trump from making any recess appointments. The president may, when the Senate is not in session, fill vacant executive posts unilaterally.