7 mins ago by Tim Brown
Senate Bows To Obama – Confirms Gina McCarthy As Head Of EPA
The United States Senate confirmed Barack Obama’s nominee Gina McCarthy to be the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency in a 59-40 vote.
McCarthy will replace Lisa Jackson, who has served in the capacity as head of the EPA since Barack Obama’s first term. In addition to complaints about the transparency in how she dealt with Congress, Jackson received numerous complaints about policies in the agency from Republicans.
Earlier on Thursday, Thomas Perez, who was the head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, was confirmed as Secretary of Labor in a 54-46 vote.
McCarthy is the latest to be confirmed after an agreement was allegedly reached by Senate leaders.
The Wall Street Journal reports:
The chamber earlier voted 69 to 31 to cut off debate on her nomination.
Ms. McCarthy’s confirmation was part of the deal senators stuck earlier this week to clear five stalled nominations. Ms. McCarthy, already a top EPA official, will lead the agency responsible for pushing through key pieces of President Barack Obama‘s new climate-change plan.
Most Republicans voted against her nomination proceeding, although many members have been more critical of the EPA’s recent actions than of Ms. McCarthy herself. Republicans have accused the EPA of overstepping its bounds on rules to limit greenhouse-gas emissions and have criticized the agency’s implementation of renewable-fuels standards.
“I don’t blame Ms. McCarthy personally for all of the administration’s policies,” Mr. McConnell said Thursday. “But I believe the EPA needs an administrator who is ready to step up and challenge the idea that the livelihoods of particular groups of Americans can simply be sacrificed in pursuit of some Ivory Tower fantasy.”
Others have a different opinion of McCarthy.
“The EPA is in desperate need of a leader who will stop ignoring congressional information requests, hiding emails and more from the public, and relying on flawed science,” Sen. David Vitter (R., La.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, said in a statement back in March. “McCarthy has been directly involved in much of that, but I hope she can reverse those practices with Lisa Jackson’s departure. I look forward to hearing answers from her on a number of key issues.”
Following Vitter’s comments, the Washington Free Beacon reported:
Several GOP-led House committees have also been probing the “Richard Windsor” email flap and other transparency issues at the agency despite not having a say on who will replace Jackson.

House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology chairman Lamar Smith (R., Texas) and Vitter released a letter to McCarthy Monday seeking the science underpinning new air quality rules and criticizing the agency’s lack of openness.
Vitter has several outstanding requests for information regarding the science behind the agency’s regulations, which the EPA has thus far refused to disclose.
Republicans are seeking data sets the EPA used as the basis for its claim of $2 trillion worth of Clean Air Act benefits between 1990 and 2020. The EPA asserts the benefits of those air regulations exceed the costs by a 30-to-1 ratio.
Vitter and Smith wrote in their letter that the EPA’s “troubling reliance on secret data belies the oft-repeated claims that this is the most transparent administration in history and that you will restore scientific integrity in government decision-making.”
“You and other high-ranking administration officials have repeatedly backtracked and reneged on promises to members of Congress to make the scientific info that underpins the agency’s basic associations between air quality and mortality available to the public and independent scientists over the last year and a half,” Smith and Vitter wrote.
Anyone that Barack Obama has nominated should be vigorously opposed, not kowtowed to. Unfortunately, this can only go so far when you have sellouts who claim to be in opposition to Obama.


Read more: http://freedomoutpost.com/2013/07/se...#ixzz2ZQue18Bv