The U.S. Senate will vote Dec. 2, its first day back in Washington after Thanksgiving holiday break, on Dan Brouillette’s nomination to head the U.S. Department of Energy.
The floor vote should occur around 5:30 p.m. ET that day, according to a Thursday Twitter post by the Senate’s Republican majority staff. Earlier Thursday, the Senate voted 74-18 to invoke cloture, setting the stage for the vote to confirm Brouillette as secretary of energy.
If Brouillette, the current deputy energy secretary, is confirmed that day, it will effectively prevent any gap in leadership at the Energy Department. Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s resignation, announced in October, is effective Dec. 1.
The former Texas governor is in farewell mode, bidding adieu to staff at the Department of Energy in a Tuesday address. That was the same day Brouillette’s nomination easily cleared the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee by a 16-4 vote.
Brouillette’s confirmation process has moved quickly. The White House formally nominated him on Nov. 7, and he testified before the Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Nov. 14.
“I strongly support Dan Brouillette,” committee Chairman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said at the outset of Tuesday’s business meeting to consider three nominations and more than 10 pieces of legislation. Echoing remarks she made during last week’s hearing, the Alaskan lawmaker said Brouillette was an effective second-in-command to Perry.
Committee Ranking Member Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) also voted in favor of Brouillette.
The four votes against the nomination came from Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.).
“There is no doubt he is well-qualified,” Cortez Masto said near the close of the hearing. But her vote, according to the senator, reflects the strained relationship between the current Department of Energy and Nevada.
“We are still battling and hearing different conversations when it comes to Yucca Mountain,” along with the 2018 shipment of weapon-grade plutonium to DOE’s Nevada National Security Site and disclosure of mislabeled radioactive waste being shipped to the same facility, Cortez Masto said.
In response to the mislabeled waste shipments, this past summer Brouillette ordered a DOE review of waste-packaging-and-shipping practices across the agency’s weapons complex.
Nevada’s elected leaders at the state and federal levels have for decades battled the federal government’s efforts to establish a geologic repository for nuclear waste under Yucca Mountain, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. They don’t believe Nevada should be forced to accept tens of thousands of tons of radioactive waste from other states and have not been persuaded that the isolated desert location has been proven safe for permanent disposal of that material.
In answering questions from Cortez Masto during the Nov. 14 hearing, Brouillette stuck to the position put forth by Perry and other Energy Department officials: The agency must follow the law and current law (specifically the 1987 amendment to the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act) says U.S. high-level radioactive waste and spent fuel from nuclear power plants must be interred at the Yucca repository.
The department, though, does not yet have a repository. It submitted a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2008, during the George W. Bush administration, but the Obama administration defunded the proceeding shortly after taking office. The Trump administration has three in three succeesive budget cycles, so far without success, to persuade Congress to appropriate money to resume licensing.
The policy on management of nuclear waste must come from Capitol Hill, Brouillette said in his testimony: “Until Congress makes a decision on Yucca Mountain, the Department of Energy will do nothing.”
Cortez Masto concluded her statement near the end of this week’s meeting by saying she hopes Brouillette can patch up DOE’s relations with the state.
Brouillette spent two years, from 2001 to 2003, as DOE’s assistant secretary for congressional and intergovernmental affairs during the George W. Bush administration. In 2003, he became staff director of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. He subsequently held executive posts with the Ford Motor Co. and the United Services Automobile Association.
When he was confirmed as deputy secretary in August 2017, Brouillette only drew 17 no votes from the full Senate. Those included Cortez Masto and then-Nevada Republican Sen. Dean Heller, who lost his seat in the November 2018 midterm elections.
During his Nov. 14 confirmation hearing, several committee members urged Brouillette to fight hard for Energy Department funding within the Trump administration.
Meanwhile, Wyden said he believes Brouillette has yet to reveal everything he knows about Perry’s possible role in allegedly pressing the Ukrainian government to investigate the son of former Vice President and Democratic Party presidential candidate Joe Biden. Hunter Biden took a seat on the board of a state-owned natural gas company. The Trump administration’s stated desire to see a Ukrainian probe of the son of a political rival is at the heart of the current impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives.
Wyden sent Brouillette a letter Thursday seeking more details on the nominee’s knowledge of any involvement by Perry or Energy Department representatives in the matter.
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers President Lonnie Stephenson publicly endorsed Brouillette this week. Among other workplaces, the IBEW represents union members at a number of nuclear power plants. “On behalf of 775,000 active and retired members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the largest union in the electrical industry, we call on the United States Senate to approve Dan Brouillette to be the next Secretary of Energy.”
