Senate Republicans refused to vote to confirm Gina McCarthy as the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency. The boycott was in response to Republican claims that the EPA had been "stonewalling" some of their inquiries, according to Reuters.
All eight Republicans on the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works boycotted the vote. Republicans had wanted to delay the vote in order to give the EPA more time to respond to their inquiries, a move that committee chairwoman Barbara Boxer, D-CA, denied.
"I'm rather stunned that this is happening," Boxer said. "I never even knew they were boycotting this until I got a letter (Thursday) morning."
That letter explained the reasons for the Republican boycott.
"While you have allowed EPA adequate time to fully respond before any mark-up on the nomination, EPA has stonewalled on four of the five categories," the letter said.
In comments to reporters the ranking Republican on the committee, David Vitter of Louisiana, said McCarthy's qualifications were not the issue but her dodging of questions regarding transparency within the EPA, according to Reuters.
"Our whole focus has been these five key transparency and openness requests," Vitter said. "That's the only thing I talked to Gina McCarthy about at our meeting on March 20."
In the weeks leading up to the vote McCarthy had answered well over 1,000 questions in order to prove her worth to the committee. Prior to joining the EPA McCarthy had served as an environmental official in Massachusetts and Connecticut, according to Reuters. Tom Carper, a democrat from Delaware, showed his support of McCarthy in a statement.
"Gina is well-suited to take the helm of the EPA and lead it in an inclusive manner, having served both Republican and Democratic governors as well as a Democratic president," Carper said. "They may not like the answers, but she has given them answers."
Boxer believed that the move to boycott the vote by Republicans was indicative of how their actions fail to represent the desires of their constituents.
"At this stage, their opposition even to allowing us to vote shows how outside the mainstream they are, it shows how obstructionist they are, it shows how their pledge to do better with women voters is false," Boxer said. "How could have a more qualified woman than Gina McCarthy? This is outrageous. Get out of the fringe lane."
