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U.S. Senate Approves New Energy Secretary

12/4/2019

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s pick to succeed Rick Perry as energy secretary won easy Senate confirmation Monday. 

Several Democrats joined Republicans in approving Deputy Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette’s promotion, 70-15.

Confirmation of Brouillette, who’d been responsible for day-to-day operations at the Energy Department for two years under Perry, came a day after Perry’s resignation became effective.

Brouillette, a veteran in state and federal energy regulatory matters, easily won bipartisan support since Trump nominated him Nov. 7. He told a Senate committee hearing last month he knew nothing about any of the Ukraine conversations under scrutiny.

However, Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon accused Brouillette of failing to detail what he knows about Perry’s meetings with natural gas officials and others in Ukraine. Wyden told the Senate on Monday that Brouillette was waging a “full-court stonewall.”

Another Democrat, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, took the floor to call Brouillette a “good man.”

“He has been forthcoming. He has not held anything back,” Manchin said.

Perry, a former Texas governor, used his job in part to promote U.S. oil and gas overseas, while also stressing the value of the national research labs and other cutting-edge work overseen by the Energy Department. Republican senators in Brouillette’s committee confirmation hearing made clear they expected him to keep using the agency to advocate for U.S. fossil fuels, although Brouillette’s first remarks at the hearing stressed the department’s research on supercomputers and other scientific efforts.

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