The Senate has lined up a vote next week to confirm Undersecretary of Energy Mark Menezes to the No. 2 position at the Department of Energy.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Thursday filed cloture on Menezes’ nomination as deputy secretary of energy. An initial procedural vote is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Monday, Politico reported.
Menezes has been one of three Energy Department undersecretaries since November 2017. The White House nominated him as DOE deputy in March. He would succeed Dan Brouillette, who last December became secretary of energy.
As undersecretary of energy, Menezes serves as the department’s lead adviser on energy policy and technologies. Brouillette expanded his portfolio early this year, giving Menezes authority to make decisions on nearly all DOE activities, not including the semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration.
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee advanced the nomination by a near-unanimous voice vote in June. The holdout was Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), who raised concerns about reports that the Trump administration is considering resuming yield producing nuclear-explosive tests. The former Nevada Test Site was used for atmospheric and underground tests for decades before the United States halted the practice in 1992.
Ahead of his nomination, Menezes ruffled a few feathers by telling a House panel in February that the Trump administration’s fiscal 2021 budget plan pointed toward establishing permanent disposal of nuclear waste under Yucca Mountain in Nevada. That came just days after the White House issued a budget proposal that specifically omitted any money to resume federal licensing for the geologic repository, after failed attepts in three prior spending cycles to persuade Congress to appropriate funds for that purpose Instead, the Energy Department is seeking $27.5 million in the budget year beginning Oct. 1 for an Interim Storage and Nuclear Waste Fund Oversight program.
The House of Representatives has supported that funding level in an appropriations package expected to be approved Friday. The Senate has yet to issue any 2021 appropriations bills.
