Just five days after Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke announced the Trump regime’s five-year plan to open up almost all U.S. coastal waters of the outer continental shelf to oil and gas drilling, he reversed course for Florida following a meeting with the state’s Republican governor, Rick Scott. Florida, he said, was unique. So there would be no drilling off its coasts. Which prompted several governors and other coastal leaders to note that their own states were also unique and Zinke should also take offshore drilling off the table for them. Some critics said the favoritism shown Florida could put the entire 2019-2024 plan at risk.
Florida’s senior senator, Democrat Bill Nelson, went further, questioning the credibility of Zinke’s exclusion of his state from the draft drilling plan. “I don’t believe it,” he said. “This is a political stunt orchestrated by the Trump administration to help Rick Scott.” Although Scott hasn’t yet announced one way or the other, many political observers think he will run for the Senate against Nelson.
So, last week, Nelson sent a letter to Zinke asking for details. So far, no reply. As a consequence of this silence, Nelson announced late Wednesday that he is exercising his privilege as a senator and putting a hold on the nominations of three Trump regime appointees.
In a press release, Nelson said he will continue blocking these nominations until the draft plan is altered to extend beyond a moratorium on drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and “fully protects all of Florida’s coasts from the threat of both offshore drilling and seismic testing.” The moratorium currently expires in June 2022. Timothy Cama reports:
A hold all but prevents the Senate from voting on the nominees. It stops Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) from getting “unanimous consent” to skip the 30 hours of debate that Senate rules technically require for each nominee, but that is waived in most cases, except some Cabinet officials.
The three nominees at issue are Susan Combs for assistant secretary for policy, management and budget; Ryan Nelson for solicitor and Steven Gardner for director of the Office of Surface Mining.
Those nominees were approved by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last year. But Democrats would not allow them to be held over into 2018, and the committee will have to vote on them again before they could come to a vote on the Senate floor. And that vote can’t happen as long as Nelson maintains his hold.
Senators of other states opposed to drilling in their coastal waters should take note and do as Nelson is doing or come up with their own various means of fighting back. Every delay now increases our chances of stopping this monstrosity from happening until new leadership is in place in Washington and can squelch it.