Republicans say they want more answers from McCarthy. McCarthy's EPA nomination in doubt

President Barack Obama’s nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency is in jeopardy after Republicans formed a united front Thursday to deny her a vote in committee.

Democrats erupted in frustration at the GOP “obstructionism” and vowed to find a way to push Gina McCarthy’s nomination through the Environment and Public Works Committee, despite the last-minute Republican boycott of the vote.


But even then, McCarthy could still face a filibuster on the Senate floor — and won’t have the 60 votes she needs, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) told his Democratic allies Thursday morning. He pleaded with the Senate to finally heed liberals’ pleas to change the filibuster rules so that nominees can be confirmed through majority vote.

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“If we bring this nomination to the floor and there’s a request for 60 votes — which we are not going to get — I think it is time for the Democratic leadership to do what the American people want, and that is to have a majority rule in the United States Senate,” Sanders said in a committee room bereft of GOP members.

“You know why some of us are going to be in favor of reforming the rules of the Senate?” Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) asked. “It’s because of abuses like this.”

( WATCH: Dems erupt in frustration at GOP “obstructionism”)

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) wasn’t ready to concede defeat, though, as he expressed outrage over Thursday’s blocking of McCarthy and Wednesday’s postponement of a vote on labor secretary nominee Tom Perez in the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

“I assure you, Mr. Perez will have his day in the Senate,” Reid said. “I assure you Ms. McCarthy will have her day in the Senate. And I will do all that I can to ensure these highly qualified nominees are confirmed.”

A White House official called on the Republicans to let McCarthy come up for a vote. “It is unfortunate that some Republicans have chosen to play politics with this nomination,” the official said.

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Republican leaders were unmoved, though, saying the Obama administration deserves blame for the impasse by refusing to fully answer questions that GOP nominees have posed about McCarthy and EPA. They include questions about the “underlying data used to justify EPA’s job-killing regulations,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a statement to POLITICO.

“It should come as no surprise that the Obama administration continues to stonewall reasonable information requests from Republicans on the EPW Committee, information that is crucial to their advise-and-consent role in this nomination,” McConnell said.

When asked whether the impasse could jeopardize McCarthy’s ability to earn 60 votes in the full Senate, a McConnell spokesman said, “Let’s see how the Obama administration responds to this reasonable request.”

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Committee ranking member David Vitter (R-La.) announced the boycott by all eight GOP members around 8:30 a.m., saying Republicans would deny the panel a quorum because McCarthy and the EPA hadn’t provided answers to the questions they had posed.

Vitter told reporters the timetable for moving ahead on McCarthy’s nomination is entirely up to EPA’s willingness to answer the questions.

“What will really determine what happens is what EPA does,” Vitter said.

“This is about our key five openness and transparency requests and everyone — Gina McCarthy, the EPA and Democratic members of the committee — have known from the beginning that this is our focus.”

Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said EPA won’t be hampered in the meantime because Acting Administrator Bob Perciasepe is “more than capable” of leading the agency while Republicans get their concerns resolved.

Democrats have noted that the GOP questions totaled more than 1,000 — what they call a record — with Vitter alone contributing 653.

Republicans also had five “requests” for EPA on issues such as how the agency handles outside groups’ threats of litigation — though Democrats said the GOP senators were actually asking the agency to offer major policy concessions that are technically infeasible and in some cases illegal.

Some Democrats also tied the McCarthy stalemate to last year’s Obama campaign theme that Republicans were waging a “war on women.” And several noted that McCarthy has a bipartisan background, having worked as an environmental appointee to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

As a Romney aide, McCarthy played a crucial role in Massachusetts’s climate protection action plan to combat global warming. She also served as commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection under then-Republican Gov. Jodi Rell.

But for the past four years, McCarthy has been the head of EPA’s air pollution regulation efforts, a bulwark of the Obama administration’s efforts to restrain climate-changing gases, toxic mercury from power plants and pollution from vehicles’ tailpipes. And that makes her nomination easy fodder for a larger proxy fight over the president’s second-term climate agenda.

Environment Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) scoffed at the Republicans’ arguments and vowed to find a way around the boycott.

“Gina McCarthy is going to become the poster child of their obstructionism,” said Boxer, who revealed that she had already delayed Thursday’s scheduled vote for three weeks at Republicans’ request. “Gina McCarthy is a woman who deserves this promotion.”

She said she hadn’t intended to pass McCarthy’s nomination out of committee using only Democratic votes — but she’s prepared to if the Republicans’ boycott continues.

Even that strategy will depend on whether the Democrats can get Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), who has been suffering health problems, to attend a meeting in person. Without him, the Democrats won’t have a majority on the panel.

Lautenberg’s office said in a statement later in the day that he’ll be available to vote on McCarthy if he’s needed for a party-line vote. “Sen. Lautenberg will certainly be there if Republicans force Chairman Boxer to take that path,” the statement said.

Boxer said she intends to use all parliamentary options available to her, “including changing the rules of the committee.”

In their letter, Vitter and other Republicans wrote that the real obstructionism has been on the part of EPA, saying the agency has stonewalled their requests for information.

“As you know, all Republicans on our EPW committee have asked EPA to honor five very reasonable and basic requests in conjunction with the nomination of Gina McCarthy which focus on openness and transparency,” the GOP members wrote. “While you have allowed EPA adequate time to fully respond before any markup on the nomination, EPA has stonewalled on four of the five categories.”

“Because of this, no Republican member of the committee will attend today’s markup if it is held,” they added. “We do not ask or expect that you will agree with this decision. We do ask and expect that you will follow the rules of the committee and the full U.S. Senate.”

The Republicans cited committee rules requiring at least two members of the minority party to be present and Senate rules requiring a majority of panelists to be present.

GOP senators say they’re just taking a page from the Democrats’ playbook: Boxer and other Democrats on the committee boycotted the 2003 committee vote on Michael Leavitt to be President George W. Bush’s nominee to head EPA, citing a need for more information.

“As is Senate custom, committee members expect full responses to their questions prior to casting a vote in committee so that they may evaluate the qualifications of the individual who has been nominated, to date this has not happened,” then-Sen. Jim Jeffords (I-Vt.) said in a statement on the day of that September 2003 boycott. “The American public needs answers. The Bush administration is weakening the Clean Air Act, it is weakening the Clean Water Act and it is not cleaning up superfund sites. We have a right to know why. These are life-and-death issues.”

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), who was EPA chairman at the time, “followed the rules cited above and scheduled an official markup for two weeks later,” the Republicans wrote Thursday. “We ask and expect that you do the same.” Inhofe is one of the eight panel Republicans who signed Thursday’s letter to Boxer.

In 2009, Senate Republicans staged a three-day boycott of Boxer’s committee that delayed global warming legislation. Boxer and other Democrats wound up passing the bill without GOP participation, despite what proved to be accurate warnings that the legislation wouldn’t be able to get at least 60 votes on the floor.