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Floor Speech
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Mrs. CAPITO. Mr. President, shortly, I will ask unanimous consent to vote on the nominations of Jess Kramer to be the Assistant Administrator for the Office of Water at the Environmental Protection Agency and Mr. Sean McMaster to be the Administrator of the Federal Highway Administration, but first I must speak on the historic delay and obstruction that my Democrat colleagues have put toward President Trump's nominees.
So far this Congress, Democrats have not let one single civilian nominee pass by unanimous consent or voice vote. By this point in the Biden Presidency, 76 civilian nominees had been confirmed by voice vote or unanimous consent.
This is truly an unprecedented moment in this Chamber's history. For years, we have operated under courtesy and precedent to swiftly move forward a portion of the President's nominees who have bipartisan support. For example, 90 percent of President Obama and President George W. Bush's civilian nominees were passed by voice vote or unanimous consent. Even in President Trump's first administration and the Biden administration, more than half of their civilian nominees were confirmed by voice vote or unanimous consent.
Now, though, we have blanket obstruction regardless of the qualifications or bipartisan support some nominees have. As a result, President Trump's second-term civilian nominees have been subject to 120 cloture votes.
Well, somebody watching from West Virginia might not know what that means. That means obstruction, time delay, and inability to get nominees through.
That is 29 percent more than the total of all of the cloture votes for nominees in the first 200 days of the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations combined.
These hurdles have led to these nominees averaging 94 days between nomination and confirmation in the first 200 days of President Trump's second term. That is 24 days longer than President Biden's nominees, 40 days longer than the nominees in President Trump's first term, and 53 days longer than President Obama's first-term nominees.
Regardless of the reason for obstruction that our Democrat colleagues have, refusing to place well-qualified nominees in Agencies where they can be responsive to all in Congress and help administer programs with congressional oversight and accountability is shortsighted and counterproductive.
So I would like to take a moment and speak about two well-qualified nominees I mentioned that have passed out of my Environment and Public Works Committee with bipartisan support but have been waiting for months literally for consideration on the Senate floor because of dilatory tactics.
First is Jess Kramer. She is the nominee for the Office of Water at the Environmental Protection Agency. Jess has 13 years of experience advocating for clean water at both the State and Federal levels, as well as in the private sector and is exceptionally qualified to lead EPA's Office of Water.
Jess was voted out of the EPW Committee with a bipartisan vote of 15 to 4 in April. That was 148 days ago.
She has built a career crafting practical, bipartisan solutions to improve water policy and ensure that communities have access to safe and reliable drinking water and wastewater infrastructure.
During Jess's time working for me on my EPW Committee staff, she played a role in shaping the water provisions in the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, securing historic investments to modernize drinking water and wastewater systems, remove lead service lines, and to address emerging contaminants.
Beyond her experience on Capitol Hill, she has served in both State and Federal roles as well as in the private sector, advocating on behalf of water systems to ensure continued infrastructure investments and smart, achievable regulations.
She understands that environmental protection and economic growth can go hand in hand, and she knows how to ensure regulations are clear, fair, and based on science.
Jess is exactly the serious civil servant all Senators and the American people should want in place now.
89, Jessica Kramer to be an Assistant Administrator of the EPA; that the Senate vote on the nomination without intervening action or debate; that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table; and that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.
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Mrs. CAPITO. Mr. President, I thank the ranking member. I don't thank him for his objection, but I thank him for weighing in here today.
I do think somebody as talented as Ms. Kramer would make the EPA run not just more smoothly, but also, she is such a professional. But I don't think we are disputing the qualifications of the nominee.
I would next like to turn to Sean McMaster, the nominee for the Administrator of the Federal Highway Administration within the U.S. Department of Transportation.
Mr. McMaster was, again, voted out of the EPW Committee in a bipartisan manner--the vote was 12 to 7--in June.
He has more than 10 years of government service working in the U.S. House of Representatives and at Federal Agencies, including the U.S. Department of Transportation.
For the last 5 years, Mr. McMaster has worked for two private sector transportation companies, first serving as a national practice consultant and vice president at HNTB and most recently as the vice president for commercial aviation and transportation at the Boeing Company.
Mr. McMaster's professional background in both the public and private sectors relating to transportation policy and implementation makes him especially well-suited to lead the Federal Highway Administration.
The Environment and Public Works Committee is now hard at work developing the next surface transportation bill. This is a major undertaking. We have received hundreds of requests from Senators on both sides of the aisle regarding this legislation.
My goal as chair is to mark up a bipartisan reauthorization bill in the EPW Committee later this year as a step toward having the bill signed into law by next September. The previous bill will lapse at the end of September 2026.
Our committee works closely with the Federal Highway Administration in the reauthorization process.
FHWA provides valuable technical assistance in making sure that the policy provisions that we all come up with achieve the congressional objectives but also are within the parameters of the Department.
Having a Senate-confirmed FWHA Administrator is important to facilitate that cooperation between the committee and the administration.
This will help address implementation issues during the bill development process. And I believe that our bipartisan reauthorization process would benefit greatly from Sean McMaster's confirmation.
So with that, I would ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to consideration of the following nomination: Executive Calendar No. 177, Sean McMaster to be Administrator of the Federal Highways Administration; that the Senate vote on the nomination without intervening action or debate; that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and that the President be immediately informed of the Senate's action.
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Mrs. CAPITO. Mr. President, I just would like to address briefly something Senator Whitehouse has said, by tossing all the blame to the fact that we have no unanimous consent and no voice vote candidates under President Trump when the control of that is squarely within the Democrat leader Senator Schumer of New York.
We know--if you look at the chart that has been made, we know the numbers that were done under the Biden administration, under Trump one, under Obama, under Bush, under Clinton, when you get down to the end of the chart, dip, big zero for President Trump. So with that, I think we are in a place that we need to make adjustments here. That is what we are looking at.
But I agree with Senator Whitehouse, and these are critical appointments, as many of them are. I am glad that Mr. Telle was able to make it through at the very end. He has already had a visit to West Virginia, and he is going to do a great job.
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