Washington, D.C. – On Tuesday, U.S. Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), joined “The Scott Jennings Show”. The Senator discussed Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Zeldin’s recent action to unleash American energy as well as how Senate Republicans are pushing forward on nominees despite unprecedented obstruction from Senate Democrats. Highlights below.
The full interview can be found here.
On the EPA Administrator Zeldin’s bold action to rescind burdensome regulations:
“Well, it’s absolutely the right move, and thank goodness that President Trump put Lee Zeldin in that place. What you see with President Trump’s nominees is that they all have a backbone to do what is right. The EPA, underneath the Obama administration, grew into this agency that was the ‘see all and fix all and end all’ agency. And so, what I mean is there wasn’t any permitting that could be done for infrastructure. There wasn’t any permitting that could be done for energy. There wasn’t any permitting that could be done for manufacturing, unless the EPA signed off on it. And because of all these sue and settle cases that was being administered underneath this executive order to which President Obama had put in in 2009, it had gummed up the process. And so, this one single move by Lee Zeldin has had more permanent reform than Congress could have done in an entire bill. This is a huge, huge act for regulation, to deregulate our economy and allow America to lead from the front. Again, I can’t under state the importance of this one move by Lee Zeldin.”
On the importance of Nuclear Energy:
“Because of this one single act by Obama in 2009 it basically stopped our ability for infrastructure when it comes to energy… Now let’s just think about we’re going to bring a nuclear power plant on line, what this single act did was make it almost impossible for a nuclear facility to come on line, which, by the way, is probably one the cleanest and safest ability to have energy and be able to meet the demands. Meaning with nuclear, you could bring up a nuclear plant and you can bring it down. And with the demand that is called upon during peak hours, you can’t do that with solar. You can’t do that with wind, but you could do it with nuclear.
“The only way that we were able to do that without nuclear, would be either coal fired power plants or natural gas. The issue with coal fired power plants, because of this one act, you couldn’t build them, and they were actually requiring them to come offline. The thing with natural gas-powered systems is you couldn’t build the pipelines to be able to get the gas to the power plants to be able to actually provide the energy they need to meet the demand. And so it gummed up the entire system.”
On making the EPA Administrator’s act permanent:
“Now you start talking about quantum computing, or you talk about AI technology, we will not be able to stay up with the energy demands that the future is calling on, that is going to the future of development. And America is either going to lead or it’s not going to lead, unless Lee Zeldin actually did this. And so, it is a full court pressure, Lee Zeldin working with Chris Wright, working with the President and working with Congress to be able to move this. Now what Congress’ point is that we need to make this move by Lee Zeldin, we need to put this in some type of permanent reform so it becomes law and can’t be simply changed, God forbid a Democrat gets in there in three and a half years.”
On historic obstruction from Senate Democrats:
“The thing that is something that’s never happened to any president of United States is President Trump is the only president in history not to have one single nominee go by unanimous consent or by voice vote. The Democrats have filibustered every single nominee, except the very first one, which was Marco Rubio. So out of 110, they filibustered 109 of his nominees. But because Leader Thune made this point when he first became leader of the Republican Senators, he said, the Democrats can either do this the hard way, or we can do this the easy way. And since they chose to do it the hard way, we’ve now taken more votes than any Senate in 35 years, and we’ve been in here longer than any senate meeting consecutive days than any Senate in 15 years. So, we are pushing forward.”
On Democrats continuing to slow down the process:
“Now, the option that we run into for August, we have 55, as we speak right now, we have 55 nominees that has been reported out of committee, meaning to the floor for a vote that have bipartisan support and in the past before prior to Chuck Schumer becoming leader, in the past, when they come out of committee with bipartisan support, typically, they go either by UC (unanimous consent) or by a voice vote, which means they do away with the two hour debate for cloture vote. They do away with having to switch in and out of executive calendar versus legislative calendar… but because of all these procedural motions, they are able to slow down the process.”
On the three options the Senate faces:
“One, either they give us a package and we agree with a package of bipartisan nominees that have been voted out of committee to the floor, and we get all those done before we recess. Two, we stay in and don’t recess and get them done. Or three, we go into a forced recess, which the President United States had the ability to do, call on Congress to recess. It’s not debatable, but amenable, meaning that they would try to amend the dates, we go back and forth, have to do a vote-a-rama on it, we’d get the vote-a-rama done and then send it to the House. The House also has to vote to go into recess, because the House isn’t in recess right now, they are in pro forma, meaning that they can still be called back in at any amount of time. And we ought to recess for 10 days, and then we just clean the slate and do every one of his noms.”
On working with the President and Leader Thune to get all the nominees through:
“Republicans, with the exception of maybe one or two, are all willing to stay and get this done. And so, I’ll go back to what Leader Thune said from the beginning of the year, the Democrats can do this the hard way, or we can do it the easy way, but we’re going to work to get President Trump’s people put in place. And we’ve said that. I’ve talked to the President now twice in the last three days about this, and he is all aboard. He understands he’s actually making a priority list of those that he would want in a package if we did that, and he’s also working with a priority list with us, if we stay here and continue to vote on how he would want those racked and stacked.”
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