Democrats press DOE’s Wright for response to inquiries

WASHINGTON – Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), ranking member of the House Appropriations Energy and Water subcommittee, told Secretary of Energy Chris Wright Wednesday she has not received a “single response” to letters she sent him regarding firings at his agency.

Kaptur said she and other lawmakers, over the past five months, on a “bipartisan” and “bicameral” level sent letters to Wright regarding both $67 billion in alleged frozen funds and the firings at the DOE’s semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). 

“It is now May 7,” Kaptur said at an Energy and Water hearing wherein Wright testified to the subcommittee on the Department of Energy’s budget. “I have to tell you, and I know you’ve been busy, but we have not had a single response to any of those requests.”

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), ranking member of the full Appropriations Committee, also told Wright that DOE did not meet the 45 day deadline, mandated by law under the continuing resolution, to send Congress a spending plan based on the funds appropriated.

“It’s simple,” DeLauro said. Since the 2025 continuing resolution kept spending levels from the 2024 funding tables, “I have a fear that we’re going to… illegally… move these funds, and move them elsewhere.”

Wright responded to both lawmakers he was rushed when he first entered office, and that he still receives dozens of letters “accusing me of things… all of which are false.” Kaptur said she was “sort of disappointed in his answer.”

Kaptur told the Exchange Monitor after the hearing that Wright “dodged the bullet.”

“I was disappointed,” Kaptur said, because “he didn’t answer how many people are on his congressional staff, he didn’t say when he would get the letter back to us.”

Kaptur continued, “and when I ask the questions about staffing at the U.S. Department of Energy, we’re getting all these, ‘Well, we really haven’t let that many people go.
Well, we really haven’t.’ I have information that says that there are thousands of people that have walked away.”

Wright told Kaptur that currently “a little less than 16,000” work at DOE currently, and “a little more than 16,000” worked there when he first arrived.” He told Kaptur that “a relatively small number” left the Department since he arrived. “A few percent, low single digits,” he added.

When Kaptur asked how many thousands had left the NNSA, Wright told her “well under a thousand.” Teresa Robbins, acting NNSA administrator, said in a separate hearing that day that in February, all 177 “probationary employees” that were terminated on Feb. 13 were offered their jobs back on Feb. 14. She said 150 people took the offer, while 27 declined to return.

Kaptur also sent a letter in April to the Government Accountability Office, alongside Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), ranking member of the Senate counterpart subcommittee, to evaluate Wright’s secretarial order on relaxing construction permits at national labs for any potential abuse of oversight.

“You need an inspector general,” Kaptur said to Wright at the hearing. “You need one. Because there is criminality in energy.”